Redemption Alley jk-3

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Just like I was mortgaging myself an inch at a time. I didn’t have the energy to argue with myself over whether or not I was different.

  The only loose end was the district attorney, the nodepoint of corruption. How had he gotten involved with Shen? Had she gone looking for someone amenable or had he committed some indiscretion that brought him to her attention? Did it matter?

  It was probably the latter. The happy little organ-theft ring that had intersected with Melisande Belisa’s plans last time had intersected with Shen’s this time, and I had a chance to pull it up by the roots.

  I rested my head on the steering wheel and breathed in, breathed out. The crusted blood in my eyes irritated me, I blinked it away.

  It wasn’t just the crusties. It was hot water filling up my eyes and trickling down my cheeks.

  Jesus. I’m in bad shape.

  The wind rattled and rolled down the street, deserted because it was after dark. So much of a hunter’s life is played out on an empty street, or in places where no light shines. Places nobody can share with you, or wants to share. Not if they’re right in the head at all.

  Saul. He would be worried. I wondered if his mother was sliding over the dark edge into finality.

  Theron would be climbing the walls too. Leon, if he knew Irene had slipped the leash, would have gotten the situation at Galina’s under control and would be coordinating the Weres in my absence. Faithfully keeping the city under wraps. I wondered how long I’d been unconscious. My bet was on not very long, since Shen would have been anxious to get the formula and her pet chemist back.

  And kill me, of course, both for interfering and for making her look bad while I did it. And probably to make points with this Argoth guy.

  I lifted my head, peered blearily out the windshield. The old moon hung, a nail-paring, low in the sky. It was approaching midnight.

  I knew Harvill lived in Riverhurst, the tony part of town, north and a few minutes out of the downtown sector. Keeping tabs on high-level law-enforcement personnel in your town saves a lot of trouble when you’re a hunter, whether you need heavier bureaucratic guns to take care of a case—or the case itself involves them.

  What are you going to do, Jill? You’re in no shape to take anyone on.

  It didn’t matter. This was mine to finish off, and by God, I was going to.

  I stroked the Charger into starting. It was an automatic, so I didn’t need to worry about shifting the way I would have in my Impala. Which was good—my legs were still weak and my fingers painfully swollen. The headlights came on without any demur, cutting a swath through the night.

  You’re not even in any shape to drive. Find somewhere to rest, get to Harvill tomorrow.

  Fat fucking chance. I slid the car into drive. Eased my foot off the brake and the car slid forward, the engine sounding overworked and underpaid.

  Just like the rest of us, honey. Never mind about that. We’ll fix that right up. I always wanted a Dodge.

  A roaring sheet of darkness beat at the edges of my vision. I blinked. The tears slicking my cheeks came faster, dripping off my jaw and wetting the ruins of my shirt.

  It’s about a twenty-minute drive, Jill. Do it in ten.

  The Charger nosed at the street, I turned, and reached for the little tingle of precognition along my nerves. It didn’t happen for a long thirty seconds, so I cruised along the dark street, my fingers still swollen and aching. The wheel slid smoothly under my hands, and I turned left on Twelfth. I could zig crosstown and avoid the major cop activity, which at this hour would be around the bars and nightclubs as they hit their stride. Drunks would be getting rowdy just about now, and domestic disturbances reaching their peak for the night too.

  The Kat Klub won’t be reopening anytime soon, folks. I done put that bitch out of business, as Leon would say.

  And I would be lying if I’d told myself it didn’t feel good to know Shen An Dua was dead. The only trouble was, her replacement was likely to be an even bigger bitch. Cogs in a wheel—one corruptor rolls out, another clicks in. Way of the world.

  When the tingle came, I shook myself. I was weaving, and one tire kissed the curb before I snapped into my own skin, each new ache in my overstressed muscles not just a weight against the nerves but a balm, keeping me awake.

  Come on, Jill. Just one more thing. Then you can rest.

  I was lying to myself and I knew it. But I tightened my dirty hands on the wheel, shook my hair back, and jammed the pedal to the floor. The Charger had some life left in him yet, and he lurched forward like someone had just stuck a pin in him. Speckles of streetlight ran up the hood, and the buildings on Twelfth all yawned at me, sliding past as if greased. I let out a painful, half-hitched laugh; it sounded rusty under the wind from the rolled-down window rustling all the fast-food wrappers. First thing I had to do, when I had time, was clean this goddamn car out. It was a dirty crying shame for a good piece of American metal to be so filthy inside.

  Complain about my driving now, goddammit. I dare you.

  He had the wrong house for a DA. It was a nice ranch-style pseudo-adobe, all done up with red tile roof and everything. The garden, what little there was of it, was immaculate, and he had a lawn that probably guzzled a winter’s worth of water every week.

  The Charger looked sorely out of place in Riverhurst. It’s the rich section of town, well insulated both from pesky downtowners and from the stink of the industrial section. The rule here is wide sidewalks, lovely expanses of thirsty grass, and more often than not a wall and an iron gate. And trees. This is the only place in the city, other than the parks, where you find honest-to-God trees, mostly left over from the quiet neighborhoods of the twenties and early forties.

  Harvill’s house was easily the shabbiest, but still worth a nice chunk of change in property tax alone. The windows were all dark and deserted, only the porch light burning.

  What are you going to do? Go up and ring the doorbell? Is he married, does he have kids?

  I couldn’t remember right now.

  What are you going to get into if you walk up the path and knock on that door?

  I was still considering this when another car approached, nosing down the street. It was a little red import number, and the engine sounded like an overworked sewing machine. Even more out-of-place than the Charger. I slouched down, keeping it in view. What’s this?

  The little red car—I could identify it now, it was a Honda—chugged to a stop in front of Harvill’s house under a big old elm tree in full leaf. The engine shut off, and the door opened, squeaking. A slim male shape rose from the tiny front seat, and I smelled someone familiar. I had trouble matching it to a face for a few seconds.

  Gilberto Rosario Gonzalez-Ayala went up the front walk. He checked the house number, then rang the bell.

  Jesus. What the hell?

  Two full minutes ticked by. He pressed the bell again.

  A light came on.

  Twenty seconds later the door opened, a rectangle of golden light. Harvill stood in the door, a man-mountain in pajamas. He looked ruffled and sleepless, and my blue eye saw a faint stain of Hell’s corruption on him. He wasn’t a Trader, but he’d been fucking around with a hellbreed.

  Gilberto said something I didn’t catch.

  “Who the hell are you?” Harvill’s voice carried across the street, the stentorian tones of a man used to the courtroom and television appearances.

  The gun spoke, a faint pop. He had a silencer.

  Harvill went down hard. I reached for the door handle.

  Gilberto stepped forward, fired twice more. Stood watching. I heard a slight sound, like an exhale. Like someone sinking down into a bed. The breath of corruption intensified, taking hold as the soul fled the body and quit fighting to reclaim the flesh.

  Do I have to kill him too?

  “That was for my brother, you piece of shit.” Gilberto’s young voice broke on the last syllable. I slouched further in the seat. So Gil had been conducting his own little war, and found
the hand behind his brother’s killer in his own way.

  It all made sense—Harvill putting whatever cops he was sure of on me, and using his position to start a little gang war on me too. I wouldn’t be able to question him and find out exactly who opened fire on me, though.

  Life’s not perfect, Jillybean. Take what you have.

  The 51 retraced his steps. He stopped by his driver’s side door, eyeing the Charger. I touched a gun butt, ran my fingers over it, and was glad I was in deep darkness.

  I didn’t want to kill this kid, no matter how scary his flat dark eyes were.

  “Eh, bruja,” the young man whispered. “Still on the job, me.”

  I can see that, Gilberto. I turned into a stone, drawing silence over me like a cloak. Could he sense the change in the night, an absence where before there had been listening?

  How much did he know about the nightside?

  Just who was this kid, anyway?

  He dropped down into the Honda. The sewing-machine engine started up again. He backed into Harvill’s sloping driveway and pulled out, heading away down the street. Somewhere in the deep water of darkness a dog barked.

  Before he turned the corner I saw a brief flare of orange light. Gilberto had just lit a cigarette.

  Jesus. A shudder worked its way down my body. I stroked the Charger into starting again, watching the street. Not a hair out of place, except for that faraway hound. Everyone sleeping the sleep of the rich and untroubled.

  Jacinta Kutchner’s neighbors hadn’t heard anything either.

  I put the car in drive and pulled out. Took a right on Fairview. The city stayed quiet. Darkness beat at the edges of my vision again, my body reminding me that it had put up with a lot of shit from me in the last forty-eight hours.

  I made it to Galina’s, parked drunkenly crosswise in front of her store because I couldn’t see well enough to do more than bump the car up against the curb. I fell sideways across the cushioned center console and darkness finally took me. I struggled on the way down—there was more I had to do, wasn’t there? There was always more to do, and something I’d forgotten.

  I dreamed of yellow hellfire chuckling and groaning to itself. I dreamed of scuttling, crawling things that forced themselves through cracks in the walls and licked up the corruption running from the corpses left stacked in a ten-by-ten basement room, runnels of foulness seeping through the walls. I even dreamed of the time before I’d become a hunter, curling up in a small space while adults fought outside and someone cried softly into a teddy bear’s wet fur.

  I struggled a quarter of the way into consciousness while someone carried me, the heat and a deep rumbling purr reminding me of Saul. But my body mutinied again and dragged me down, and in this fresh darkness there were no dreams.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Sunlight poured through the window. I lay and stared at it for a long time before moving, wincing a little bit as my head and body both protested. Even hellbreed strength has to be paid for, and I’d cycled enough etheric force through my body to give myself a hell of a hangover.

  Get it, Jill? “Hell” of a hangover? Arf arf. I groaned, stirred slightly, and pushed weakly at the covers. I was tucked into Galina’s own bed, the huge mission-style monstrosity she’d hung with white netting to make a sort of cloud to sleep in.

  I heard footsteps. Voices. Nobody was yelling, and one of the voices was Galina, calm as always. So she was okay.

  Good.

  I lay in the bed a few moments longer, staring at the fall of sunlight through the window. My trench, battered and still smelling of smoke, was draped over a high-backed wooden chair. It was cool in here, air conditioning soughing through a vent near the door. Mellow hardwood shone through layers of polish and care.

  My fingers were back to their regular size. I was still filthy with crusted blood and smelling of smoke, and my head ached, ached, a pumpkin on the stem of my neck. I felt the bruises from Shen’s narrow delicate hands still digging into my throat.

  How long was I out? Is it darkmoon yet? I killed that evocation site, but maybe Shen had another one. Irene didn’t think so, but she could have been lying.

  Coherent thought halted. I didn’t have enough energy for it.

  I blinked. My cheeks were hot and chapped. There was grime ground into my face and under my nails. I almost never fall asleep without washing my face, even if I’m covered in guck I like scrubbing my shiny little flower smile, as Sister Mary Ignatius called it in kindergarten.

  I tried moving again. Rolled over on my back.

  Get up, Jill. Get moving. You’re not done yet.

  Footsteps on the stairs. I listened—Galina’s softly distinctive tread, and someone else’s. Probably Leon, the way he pushed lightly off of each step was familiar. I pressed myself up on my hands, ignoring the shaking in my arms, and found out I was wearing a T-shirt reduced to bloodsoaked, bullet-holed rags, and my leather pants stank of hellbreed guck.

  And here I was in Galina’s nice clean bed. Why hadn’t she put me in the spare room? Was Carp still in there?

  Rest easy, Carper. It’s all tied off. Well, mostly. I hoped he was sleeping. I hoped he’d pulled through.

  “You’re awake.” The Sanctuary’s sweet face was solemn. “I’ll have to let Theron know. He threatened to kill you as soon as you woke up.”

  I cleared my dry throat. Leon came into sight behind her, expressionless, with a beer can in one hand and a bottle in the other. The copper in his hair gleamed, and Rosita was snugged safely against his back.

  “Charming.” My voice was a dried husk of itself. I coughed, and Leon slid past Galina, offered me the chilly bottle of microbrew. Why he drank canned piss when there were better things around was beyond me. “How long was I out?”

  “Don’t worry.” My fellow hunter settled himself on the end of the bed with a sigh, easing down as if he hurt all over too. “We found a primary evocation site at that nasty-ass nightclub. I took care of it.”

  I sagged in relief. So the one at the airfield had been Shen’s backup. One worry down.

  “Jill—” Galina began, but Leon interrupted her.

  “Why don’t you go get her somethin’ to eat, darlin’? I’ll make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. You go call Theron too, so he can stop worryin’.” Leon’s dark eyes were steady, and his mouth was drawn in a tight line.

  Oh, shit. What’s gone wrong now? “More scurf?” I hazarded, but Leon shook his head. Copper chimed in his hair. There were dark circles under his eyes.

  “Naw. Town’s clean as a whistle. Go on now, Lina.” He toasted her absently with the Pabst can, and she made a face as if he’d told her to drink it.

  “I’ll bring up coffee.” She cast one short, troubled glance my way, but I was too aching and muzzy-headed to decipher it. Instead I took a pull off the bottle and winced at the havoc it was going to play with my headache.

  We listened to her go down the stairs. Leon shifted a little bit inside his clothes. Copper clinked, and he touched one of the amulets hung around his neck, then put his hand down with an effort. “Talked to that lieutenant. Your contact.”

  “Monty,” I supplied. Thank God he’s okay.

  “Big fucking mess for him to clean up. I guess this Harvill asshole came down with a serious case of the dead.” Leon’s tone was a careful nonquestion, and my silence a careful nonanswer. “Dangerous, being in bed with hellbreed.”

  I shrugged. Took another pull off the bottle. Waited for him to get to the point.

  “Your town should be clean, but you know how scurf are.”

  I knew. I nodded. One of my earrings was lighter than the other; it had probably broken sometime or another. My skin crawled. I couldn’t wait to get cleaned up.

  “That cop you brought in from that nightclub.” Leon sank a little heavier into the bed, took another long swallow from his can. Condensation beaded on the aluminum, I could hear the liquid going down his throat. Downstairs a refrigerator door opened, and Galina began to hum.
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br />   My heart turned to a stone inside my ribs. Oh, shit. “Carper? Is he okay?”

  Leon sighed. “He talked Galina into letting him go home yesterday. Waltzed out, went home, and ate his Glock.”

  No. Oh, no. “What?” I sat bolt upright, then wished I hadn’t because my head immediately started pounding. “What the fuck?”

  “Galina blames herself. Said she never should have let him go. I was with the Weres, cleaning out that nightclub.” His shoulders hunched. “She said she figured the cop was up and walking around, and everything was tied off…”

  “Carp?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. “Andrew? It can’t… he wouldn’t…”

  Leon’s face set itself. “He wasn’t too tight-bolted, Jill. Sometimes when civilians see the nightside, they go nuts. He was in that hole run by that Asian bitch for a while and they played with him, Lina said.”

  While I sat outside and worried over who would report me as not dead. “Jesus,” I whispered. “You’re sure it was suicide?” Because Kutchner’s death looked like a suicide too, but maybe someone pulled the trigger on Carp too. Because… oh, God. Carper. Why?

  But I knew why. Sometimes, when you pull a civilian out of a tangle with the nightside, they don’t stay out. They go into the black hole. A peek under the surface of the normal world throws them off the back of reality, and they never return.

  Leon spread one hand, made a helpless gesture. “I’m sure, Jill. That’s where I talked to that lieutenant—Montaigne. Good ol’ boy, that one. Worried about you.”

  “I’m sure he was.” The words tasted bitter. I drained the bottle in a few long, long swallows. It was ashes going down. The carbs would give me a quick flush of strength, but I needed protein if I was really going to bounce back. “Jesus Christ. Carper.”

  “Funeral’s this Saturday. I got it all written down if you want it.” His shoulders slumped for a moment, and so did mine. Silence rose between us, under the safety of sunlight.