Angel Town

Buzzing. In my head. All around me. Creeping in. A rattling roar, filling my skull. Crawling into my teeth, sticky little insect feet all over my face, feelers probing at my lips. They move, hot and pinprick-tiny, and that sound is enough to drag me screaming out of…

…where?

Dark. It was dark, and there was no air. Sand filled my mouth, but the little things crawling on me weren’t sand. They were alive, and they were droning loud enough to drown out everything but the sounds I was making. Terrifying sounds. Suffocating, it was in my mouth and my nose too, lungs starved, heart a suddenly pounding drum.

Scrabbling through sand, dirt everywhere, the buzzing turning into a roar as they lifted off me. The insects didn’t sting, just made that horrible sound and flew in disturbed little circles.

I exploded out of the shallow grave, my screams barely piercing the rumbling roar. Little bits of flying things buzzed angrily, flashing lights struck me like hammers and I fell, scrabbling, the wasps still crawling and buzzing and trying to probe through my mouth and nose and ears and eyes and hands and feet and belly.

They were still eating, because flesh had rotted.

I had rotted.

I scrubbed at myself as the train lumbered past. That was the light and the roaring. My back hit something solid and I jolted to a stop. The wasps crawled over me, and when I forced air out through my nose it blew slimy chunks of snot-laced sand away.

I collapsed against the low retaining wall, breath sobbing in and out. My head rang like a gong, I bent over and vomited up a mass of dark, writhing liquid.

The stench was awesome, titanic, a living thing. It crawled on the breeze, pressed against me, and I vomited again. This time it was long strands of gooey white, splatting. Coming from nowhere and passing through me, landing in twisting runnels.

Just like cotton candy! a gleeful, hateful voice crowed inside my head. The eggwhite was all over me, loathsome slime turning the sand into rasping dampness.

I squeezed my knees together, bent over, and whooped in a deep breath. The wasps crawled, and other bits of insect life clung to me. Maggots. Other things. Of course—out in the desert, the bugs get to you. Especially in a shallow grave, when there’s been trauma to the tissues.

I grabbed my head. The sound was immense, filling me to the brim, the roaring swallowing my scream. Gobbets of rotting flesh fell away, the wasps angrily swarming, and the train rumbled away into the distance.

Leaving me alone. In the night.

In the dark.

I tore at the rotting flesh cloaking me. It peeled away in noisome strips, and under it I was whole, slick with slime. I retched again, a huge tearing coming all the way up from my toes, and produced an amazing gout of that slippery eggwhite stuff again.

Ectoplasm? But—The thought floated away as the pain came down on me, laid me open. Skull cracked wide, bones twisting, everything in me creaking and re-forming. My knees refused to give, my short-bitten nails dug through the cloak of rotting and found my own skin underneath.

I scrambled along the retaining wall. The grave yawned, leering, crawling with disturbed insect life. I fell on sand, grubbed up handfuls of it, and scrubbed at myself. I didn’t care if it stripped skin off and left me bleeding, didn’t care if it went down to bone, I just wanted the rot away.

Under the mess of decaying flesh was a torn T-shirt, rags of what had been leather pants. At least I had some clothes. I was barefoot.

I collapsed to my knees on the sand, looked up.

A full moon hung grinning in the sky, bloated cheese-yellow. The hard, clear points of stars glittered, and steam slid free of my skin.

Whole skin. Clear, unblemished, scraped in places. But not rotting.

The pain retreated abruptly. My questing fingers found filthy hair, stiff with sand and God knew what else. The wasps were sluggish—it gets cold out here at night. Everything else was burrowing to escape the chill.

It’s cold in Hell, too. So cold. That thought threatened to tip me over into howling madness, so it vanished. Swept under the rug. Hey presto.

My skull was still there. Hard curves of bone, tender at the back. I let out a sob. Held my hands out, flipped them palm-up. They shook like palsied things.

Branches. Like branches.

But the image fled as soon as it arrived, mercifully. My forearms were pale under the screen of filth. On my right wrist, just above the softest part, something glittered. Hard, like a diamond. It caught the moonlight and sent back a dart of brilliance, straight through my aching skull. The sight filled me with unsteady loathing, and I shut my eyes.

Start with the obvious first. Who am I?

The train’s rumble receded.

Who am I?

I tilted my head back and screamed, a lonely curlew cry.

Because I didn’t know.

1

I shivered, pushed the door open. My feet left bloody prints on faded blue-speckled linoleum.

The diner was deserted. Long white lunch counter with chrome napkin holders, pies under glass domes, and the smell of industrial coffee fought with the reek around me. The night wind had scrubbed the worst of the stink away, but I still felt it like a cloud breathing from my skin.

Why I was worried about that when I was dripping with sandy, crusted filth, bare- and bloody-footed, and wild-haired in the rags of leather pants and a T-shirt was beyond me. Still…it bothered me. Something about my hair bothered me, too. I felt completely naked, even though all my bits were mostly covered. I was too scrawny for there to be much to look at anyway. Pared down to scarecrow bone, muscle wasted away, my elbows bigger than my biceps, my knees knobs.

The diner sat alone off the highway, its windows glowing gold with warm electric light. Two ancient, spaceship-shaped gas pumps stood outside in a glare of buzzing fluorescents. No car was visible for miles in any direction. In the distance, the glow of a city rose, staining the night. I’d been heading for that glow for a slow, stumbling eternity, reeling drunkenly on the blacktop because the shoulder was full of pebbles and other things. Broken glass. Cigarette butts. Nameless, random trash.

I was just another piece of refuse, blowing along.

The booths marched away, all covered in blue vinyl. The tables were spotless, their chrome edges sharp-bright. The window booths even had sprays of artificial violets in tiny mass-produced white ceramic vases, the kinds with pebbled sides and wide mouths.

For a moment I had a memory, but it slipped away like a catfish in muddy water. I stood there on an industrial-grade rubber mat that used to say WELCOME in bright white paint. The E and the OM were scuffed into invisibility by God alone knew how many feet.

The place probably did a land-office business during the day. Maybe.

“Justaminnit!” someone yelled from the kitchen. There was a sizzle, and the heavy sound of a commercial freezer slamming shut. “Be right with ya!”

Yeah, great. I don’t even have any money. There was a phone in a booth outside the front door, but who the hell would I call?

I didn’t even know my own name.

“Well, good eveni—gooood gravy Marie!” The man hove into sight, two hundred fifty pounds if he was an ounce, most of it straining to escape his white T-shirt and the stained apron slung loincloth-style below his considerable belly. Despite that, he looked hard, and the lightness of his step told me he could do some damage if he wanted to.

If he had to.

But he simply stopped and stared at me. “Goddamn, girl, what happened to you?”

How the hell did I know? I’d just clawed my way out of a goddamn grave. I opened my mouth, shut it.

The door opened behind me. Instinct spiked under my skin; I jerked to the side. My bare, bleeding feet slapped down, braced for action. I ducked, my hand blurring up in a fist.

But broad, warm fingers closed around my filthy, naked upper arm.

He set me on my feet. Taller than me, stoop-shouldered and wiry, his dishwater hair laying close to the skull, and a shadow of acid-melt scarring over the lower half of his face. I stared, a sound like rushing water filling my head, and his ruined lips twitched. You could see where the scars had been really bad, but they were…were they?

Yes, they were retreating. I knew it because I’d seen him before. The black curtain over whatever had happened to me didn’t part, but I knew him.

“You,” I whispered.

“I’m about to call the Authority.” Apron Man crossed his beefy forearms. “What the fuck is—”

The scarred man looked up. His eyes were bright blue, and that was wrong, too. Something shifted under the skin of his face, and his mouth opened slightly. No sound came out on the slight, soft exhale, but the fat man shut up.

“Well, why’n’tcha say so?” he mumbled. “Nobody ever tells me nothin’. Coffee, comin’ up.”

Blue Eyes looked down at me. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he raised his other hand, indicating the booths. Like he was asking me where I wanted to sit.

Those eyes. They’d been filmed before, gray cataracts hooding them. And the scarring had been much, much worse, in runnels and pleats like the flesh had been reshaped with acid. He’d worn gray coveralls, and the name tag had been a snarl of faded thread.

“I know you.” My voice cracked halfway through. “How do I know you?”

He shrugged a little, and indicated the booths again.

Great.

Well, there wasn’t anything else I was doing. I picked a booth along the wall, since the windows made my nape prickle and I needed to see the front door.

Why? Why do I need to see it?

I just did, that was all.

He let me choose my side, slid in across from me. Fine threads of gold glittered in his hair under the lights. There were fluorescents in here, too, but over the door and the window booths were incandescent bulbs. It made the light softer, actually—fluorescents are hell on everyone.

Sand fell off me. The scrim of eggwhite goop in my mouth tasted of ashes. My skin prickled with insect grime. Bloody footprints tracked in from the front door, and now that I was sitting I felt just how filthy and exhausted I was. Every part of me had been pulled apart and put back together by someone who had no fucking idea what they were doing.

I stared at Blue Eyes. He regarded me mildly, his ruined mouth curving up in what could have been a small smile. Strings of dirty hair fell in my face, and it seemed wrong. I tried again to think of what my hair should look like. Got exactly nowhere.

We sat like that for a while, until Apron Man brought two heavy, steaming china cups and plunked them down. He gave me an incurious glance and walked away, his heavy shoes blurring two of my footprints.

What the hell?

Blue Eyes cupped his hands around his mug. Looked at me.

I figured I could ask, at least. “Who am I?”

Blue Eyes shrugged. It was a very expressive shrug. Now that I was sitting down, the shaking started. It began in my feet and worked its way through my bones one at a time, until I was shivering like a junkie. The neon OPEN sign in the window buzzed, and Apron Man began to sing as something sizzled on the grill. An old Johnny Cash tune, “Long Black Veil.”

How could I know that, and not know my own name?

My stomach cramped. “You know me,” I hazarded. “But you can’t talk?”

Another small shrug, this one different than the last.

“You won’t talk.”

This earned me a nod.

Well, great. “How am I…Jesus. You…I…” I looked down at myself. The trembling threatened to rob me of words. “I know you somehow.”

Another nod. Then he made a slow, deliberate movement, reaching under the table like he was digging in a pocket. Faint alarm ran through me, tasting like copper through the ashy sludge in my mouth.

He laid the gun on the tabletop, its barrel carefully pointed away from either of us. I stared, my mouth hanging open as he picked up his coffee mug, deliberately, and drank.

It was a .45, custom-built. A nice piece of hardware, dull black, a real cannon. I knew what it would feel like if I picked it up. I knew the heft and the pull, knew exactly how much pressure to apply on the trigger. I could feel that the butt was reinforced as well for pistol-whipping.

“My gun.” I sounded like all the air had been punched out of me. “That’s mine. I have a gun.” Or I had one. And you’re returning it.

Blue Eyes nodded. He set down his mug with a decisive little click, then edged the butt a little closer to me with one fingertip. A faint breeze touched my face. His mouth opened as if he would say something profound, but then he shut it tightly and shook his head. Sorry, Charlie. No can speak.

“You’re going to have to help me here. Give me a verb, or something.” The shaking started tapering off. Sand slid off my clothes, pattered on the bench and the floor. The thought of a shower filled me with sudden longing. Maybe some food, too. A bed to sleep in, because I was so, so tired.

Dead tired.

Nausea cramped under my breastbone again. Blue Eyes was fiddling around under the table once more. This time he came up with something very small. A tiny metallic sound as he laid it on the table, his palm covering it.

A gun, and something else. I looked up.

His face changed. With the cataracts over his eyes peeled away, those eyes spoke for him. Right now, they burned with pure agonizing sadness. The expression drew his mouth down, and I found out the scarring was retreating. It shrank on his face a little, the skin smoothing out. I blinked.

His hand lifted.

It was a ring. A simple circle of silver, and my heart leapt like a landed fish inside my chest. Scruffed up and obviously worn, I knew that if I picked it up I would see the etching on the inside. Tiny scratches of Cyrillic, the only thing I would ever know how to read in that alphabet, because someone had shown me a long time ago.

Do svidaniya, it said. “Go with God.”

The other meaning: “goodbye.”

Bile whipped the back of my throat. I picked up my mug with dream-slow fingers. It was too hot, but I took a searing gulp of the acrid coffee anyway. It tasted like it had been on a burner for a while, but it was better than the eggwhite crap.

Ectoplasm. It was ectoplasm. Something’s happened.

Hot water filled my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek, and Blue Eyes nodded. He pointed at my right hand, and I knew without asking what he meant. I set my mug down and turned my hand over, looking at the thing embedded in my right wrist. Just in the softest part, above the pulse’s frantic tattoo.

It was fever-hot, a glittering, colorless, diamond-shaped gem set in my skin. Its edges frayed, like it had been surgically implanted and then pulled around a bit. It spasmed and settled like a shivering little animal. That tiny twitching tremble communicated itself up the bones of my arm, settling in my shoulder with a high hard hum.

Fear whipped through me, and a bald edge of anger like smoking insulation.

“What the fuck is this?” I whispered.

His lips moved slightly, and the flesh on his face crawled. Like there were bugs underneath. I pressed back into the booth, my torn heels sending up a shriek as I shoved them into the floor, my right hand darting for the gun with scary, instinctive speed. Fingers curling, my arm tensing, the barrel trained unerringly at his head.

Familiar. Done this before, too.

He pointed again at my right wrist. His lips moved slightly. The words slid into my head, interlocking puzzle pieces of meaning.

When you’re ready.

One moment he was there, solid and real. The next, there was a pop of collapsing air, and the booth was empty. Another breeze feathered against my face, touching the crusted strings of my hair. I flinched, the gun lowering as I scanned the entire place.

Empty. Except for Apron Boy, who came shuffling out from the kitchen. Quick as a wink, I had the gun under the table. My left hand scooped up the ring, and the feel of cool metal sent a zing through me, like tinfoil against metal fillings.

Apron Boy held a steaming plate, which he plopped down in front of me along with silverware wrapped in a paper napkin. “Nice guy,” he said. “Paid for your breakfast, at least. You eat right on up, honey.” He looked expectantly at me, expecting some kind of conversational volley back.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Thanks.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He hove away, moving side to side like a walrus shouldering up onto a rocky beach, but lightly, his feet planted with care. The plate held ham, scrambled eggs, hash browns.

It looked good.

Eat while you can, Jill.

A klieg light went on inside my head. “Jill,” I whispered. “I’m Jill.”

I tucked the gun safely away. The ring fitted securely on my third left finger. Was I married?

A pair of dark eyes, silver-scarred hair, and fluid grace. He half-turned, reaching for something beside the stove, and the clean economy of motion made my heart skip a beat.

As soon as the image came, it vanished. I shook my head. More sand slipped free in a hissing rush, but none of it fell into the food. I was suddenly hungry. Not just hungry.

Famished.

A gun. A ring. And whatever that thing was on my wrist. And vanishing blue-eyed mutes. Whoever I was, I was certainly interesting.

Well, as long as the food was here, I’d take it. I’d worry about what to do afterward.

I hunkered down, stripped the napkin off the stamped-metal knife and fork and spoon, and started shoveling it in.

2

By the time I quit, Apron Man had refilled my coffee twice and brought out two more plates. I couldn’t get full, felt like a pig. At first the food just vanished into the huge hole in my gut, but after the second plate I slowed down a bit. I was in the middle of the third before I began to feel halfway satisfied—biscuits and gravy, sausage patties, a mountain of wheat toast dripping with butter, a smaller plate of huevos rancheros with a side of rice. It was enough to put a grown man in the hospital, but it looked good to me. I did my best, but the yawning emptiness in me suddenly filled halfway through the eggs. The plates looked like something feral had been at them, but Apron Boy didn’t say a word, just took them as soon as I pushed them away, then came back with the coffee pot and a slice of coconut cream pie.

I didn’t even know if I liked coconut cream pie. I sat there and looked at the piped decorative cream and the little shaved bits of toasted nutflesh and felt sick. Then I wondered if chocolate cream would’ve been worse. Or cherry. Or…

How could I know about pie and not know who I was?

The gun’s heavy weight rested against my side. Jill. You’re Jill, and you’re armed. Focus on that, the rest will take care of itself.

“Sure be glad to close up early tonight.” Apron Man shuffled back with another cup of coffee. He wedged himself into the other side of the booth with a sigh. “Get off my old dogs. I’m going into town, give you a lift.”

Another one of those silences, and I figured out he was waiting for me to say something. “Really? That’s…nice.” My voice was a papery husk. “Town?”

He shrugged. “Santa Luz. The bad old lady herself. You’d have to walk a fair ways. Told your friend I’d give you a lift, since he was goin’ elsewhere.”

Was he, now. I’ll just bet. I picked up the clean fork, cut off the tip of the pie slice. “Nice of you.” Awkward, like the words were sharp edges and I had to hold them just right.

“Yeah, well. Got to do what we can to he’p each other. You got somewhere in town you’re goin’?”

I don’t even know my name. Just how to hold this gun. And that if I wanted to, I could be across this table with this cheapass fork stuck in your carotid in a hot half second. It played out in vivid Technicolor inside my head—spurting blood, the greenstick crack of a neck breaking, the things I could do. “No. Just the city limits will do.”

He gave me a dubious look, but his attention was snagged by the pie. “Is it gone off? I wouldn’t think so, ol’ Onorious brought it in this morning.”

Onorious? “It’s good.” It was a lie, I hadn’t tasted it yet. But the rest of the food was good. I slid the plate over into the middle of the table. “Want to share?”

His face lit up. “Boy howdy!” And wouldn’t you know it, he had a spoon. He must’ve been waiting for me to ask.

I put my forkful in my mouth, studied his wide walrus face. He looked…kind. But something bothered me. I barely tasted the pie, but it was okay. I could get to like coconut cream. “What are you doing out here?”

He shrugged, chewing vigorously. Swallowed in a rush, took a gulp of coffee. “Landed here a while ago. Get a fair amount of business. People drive, they get hungry. And here I am. Gas pumps still work, but mostly it’s the phone and the cookin’. People come in for the phone, and it smells so good they want to have a bite.”

I nodded. My right hand came up, I offered it across the table. The gleam on the underside of my wrist sent a small rainbow winging across the Formica. “Jill.”

He grinned even wider. It was a nice smile, broad white teeth with not a trace of food clinging to them. The corners of his eyes crinkled up, and for a moment something golden moved in the depths of his eyes.

You could see where he had been handsome, once.

His hairy paw closed over my filthy, smaller hand. “Martin. Martin D. Pores, atcher service. Honor to meetcha. Now, what do you say we finish up this here piece of pie and get movin’? Dawn’s a-going to break afore you step over that limit, miss.”

Dawn? But I was past questioning by then, really. A great wave of exhaustion crashed over me. My stomach was full, I had a gun and the ring, and that was all that was important right now. “I’m tired.” I sounded like a cranky child.

He considered me for a long few seconds, and if I’d been less tired I might’ve been concerned about the things moving deep in his gaze. “I’ll bet you are. You want to visit the ladies’ while I get this all closed up?”

The car was a 1975 Mercury wagon, faded fake-wood paneling and handling like a whale. The engine had a slight knock to it, one I caught myself trying to suss out. For all that, it was comfortable. There’s just something about a piece of American heavy metal when you can stretch your filthy battered feet out and watch the miles slip away like silk under the wheels. The ribbon of white paint running alongside the freeway reeled us along just like a big silent fish on a hook.

Martin kept it five under the speed limit, and he drove like an old granny. It didn’t matter. There was nobody else on the road at this hour. The stars were hard clear points of light, each one a diamond, and the moon was low.

“You like music, Miss Jill?”

I thought about it. Did I? Didn’t everyone? I decided on a good answer. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s good. Music’s a good thing.” He twisted the shiny silver knob and caught what must have been an oldies station, because Johnny Cash was singing about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die.

I shivered. It couldn’t have smelled good with me in the car, so I’d rolled my window down. Fresh, cold air poured over me, the roaring of the slipstream almost making words. I propped my filthy hair against the back of the seat and sighed.

Martin kept both his beefy paws on the wheel. He hummed along as Cash turned into the Mamas and the Papas, singing about nobody getting fat but Mama Cass. My eyelids were suddenly heavy.

Stay alert, Jill.

But there was no way. I’d had a hell of a day. Night. Whatever.

The hum of the engine and the song of the wheels were both soothing. With a full stomach and the heater finally blowing warm air into the car, I fell asleep to Martin’s tuneless humming.

Just like a newborn baby.

3

I drove the knife into the sand next to me. Picked up the gun. Hefted it, and looked at him.

If his grin got any wider, the top of his head would flip open.

I pointed the gun at him, and smiled. The expression sat oddly on my face. He hissed, Helletöng rumbling in the back of his throat.

I almost understood the words, too. A shiver raced down my spine.

“You can’t escape me.” The rock groaned as his voice lashed at it, little glassy bits flaking away. They plopped down on the sand with odd ringing sounds. “The fire won’t last forever, my darling. Then I’ll step over your line in the sand, and you’ll find out what it means to be mine.”

“Think again.” I bent my left arm. Fitted the gun’s barrel inside my mouth. My eyes were dry, my body tensing against the inevitable.

Comprehension hit. Perry snarled and lunged at the banefire. It roared up, a sheet of blue flame. Twisting faces writhed in its smokeless glow, their mouths open as they whisper-screamed.

I glanced down at the slice on my palm. Still bleeding. It was hard to tell if the black traceries were still there. For a moment, I wondered.

Then I brought myself back to the thing I had to do. Stupid body, getting all worked up. What the will demands, the body will do—but it also tries to wriggle, sometimes.

Not this time.

“Kiss!” he howled. “You’re mine! MINE! You cannot escape me!”

I saw Saul’s face, yellow and exhausted, against the white pillow. I smelled him, the musk and fur of a healthy cat Were. I saw Galina’s wide green eyes and marcel waves, Hutch’s shy smile, Gilberto’s fierce glittering-dark gaze. I saw them all, saw my city hunched on the river’s edge, its skyscrapers throwing back dusk’s last light with a vengeance before the dark things crawled out of their holes. I saw Anya perched on Galina’s roof with her green bottle, staring down at the street and wondering if I had the strength to do this. Wondering if she would have to hunt me down, if I failed here.

And I heard Mikhail. There, little snake. Honest silver, on vein to heart. You are apprentice. Now it begins.

I love you, I thought. I love you all.

“You cannot escape!” Perry screamed, throwing himself at the banefire again. It sizzled and roared, and the rocks around me begin to ring like a crystal wineglass stroked just right. If this kept up they might shatter.

Wouldn’t that be a sight.

“Do you hear me, hunter? You cannot escape me!”

Watch me, I thought, and squeezed both eyes shut. The banefire roared as he tried again to get through, actually thrusting a hand through its wall, snatching it back with a shattering howl as the skin blackened and curled. It was now or never.

I squeezed the trig—

—up from the concrete with a southpaw punch, bone shattering as my fist hit. My foot flicked out, heel striking sharply in the second man’s midriff, and I was beginning to wake up. The alley tilted crazily, both sides leaning toward each other like old drinking buddies, and the rotting refuse in choke-deep drifts along its sides smelled about as horrible as I did. Faint grayish light seeped in through the crack of sky showing above. The sky was weeping a little, a diseased eye.

There were two more of them, one with a chain that rattled musically as he shook it. Cold fear and exhilaration spilled through me like wine.

Gutter trash, Jill. Not worth your time.

But my body wasn’t listening. It knew better than I did, and I was suddenly across the distance separating me from Chain Boy, my knee coming up and sinking into his groin with a short meaty sound. He folded down, and I had the gun in my right hand, pointed at the last man. He fetched up like a dog at the end of his tether.

A chain’s only good if you can use it. It’s also only good for a very short distance, shorter than you’d think.

For a moment I wondered how I knew that.

The fourth man was actually a boy. A weedy little boy with greasy lank hair and a lean, sallow face, a leather jacket that creaked like the cow was still mooing and hadn’t missed it yet, and pegged jeans that looked dipped in motor oil. The switchblade made a small clatter as it hit the concrete, dropping from his nerveless hand. My finger tightened on the trigger.

He’s just a kid. Come on.

But that kid would’ve followed his buddies in raping and possibly killing me if I was what they’d thought I was.

Wait. What am I? It said something that even sleeping like the dead, I kept hold of a gun.

I didn’t see the Mercury. Martin D. Pores, nice guy and granny driver, had left me in an alley. Nice of him. Why was I surprised? Of course he would, it was the way things were going.

Pay attention! A sharp phantom slap, my head snapping aside, and my right foot flicked out again, catching sneaky Guy # 2 in the knee. Crack like well-seasoned firewood when the axe split it, and he folded down with a rabbit-scream.

Must’ve hurt.

The boy in the motorcycle jacket just stood there and shivered. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but it gave him some trouble. Maybe it was the mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, that I’d found staring at me in the diner’s restroom mirror. Maybe it was the gunk smeared all over me.

Maybe it was even the gun.

“Go home,” I rasped. My voice didn’t want to work quite right. “Go to school. Get a job and stop hanging out in alleys.”

His head bobbed, lank hair falling forward in strings. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t say just who. Someone with a flat, dark stare, someone I knew because…

…it was gone. Just for a second, I had it. Then it retreated, maddeningly.

He turned tail and ran, his sneakers whispering over concrete and kicking aside random bits of trash.

I spun, slowly, in a complete circle, marking every fallen body. The gun swept like a searchlight, tracking by itself to cover possible hiding places before I even thought of it. An easy instinctive movement, just like breathing. Whoever I was, I’d spent a lot of time doing this.

Training, milaya. A gruff, harsh voice, the words freighted with a foreign accent and cut off short and sharp. It gets into bones. Run all the way deep.

Who was that? My right hand jerked a little, as if the gem set on the inside of my wrist was twitching, pulling me.

He’d trained me well. The guys were down and moaning, except for the first one—the one I’d punched, his cheekbone shattered and bits of white tooth flecking the wet hole of his twisted-open mouth. He lay utterly still, with his head at an odd angle.

Oh, Christ, did I kill someone?

The sudden certainty that it wasn’t the first time poured down my back, ice cubes trickling. Nobody who handled a gun like this could be innocent.

I backed up two steps, bare feet on cold concrete. At least I wasn’t bleeding anymore. Maybe I was toughening up.

You clawed your way up out of a grave. I’d say that’s pretty damn tough. The question is, what do you do now?

I had a full belly. But I needed shelter, and some more clothes wouldn’t be amiss.

A quick search of the two moaning men produced rolls of cash as thick as my forearm. Plus little plastic baggies full of illegal smokable stuff, switchblades, and two guns—a .38 and a 9mm. I tossed them down the alley so the boys didn’t get any ideas, and considered the guy I’d punched. After a second or two of thought, I found another roll of cash as well as more baggies on him. He was still breathing, the air bubbling through the bloody mess of his mouth. I’d broken his cheekbone and quite a few of his teeth. My hand didn’t hurt at all, and how had I blinked across space to take out Chain Boy?

The gem on my right wrist glittered, colorless, a hard dart of light as dawn strengthened and spilled more illumination through the crack serving as the alley’s ceiling.

You don’t know your own strength, girl.

“I guess not,” I muttered. “Jesus.”

I got the hell out of there.

4

The crackling plastic bags on the tiny room’s colorless bed gave up a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were a little too big, but I hadn’t been able to try them on. It was bad enough waiting in the shadows for the gigantic Walmart a mile away to open. By 9 a.m. when the doors whooshed wide, I was a bundle of exposed, dirty, and vulnerable nerves.

I shouldn’t have worried. Those employees don’t bat an eye. I guess no matter what I looked like, they’d seen worse. After getting an eyeful of the crowd waiting to scramble on in and get their cheap shit even cheaper, I won’t exactly say I was heartened—but I was feeling a little more anonymous.

I remembered my shoe size, at least, but the sneakers felt weird, too light and flexible. The holster for the .45—I’d stuck it in the waistband of my ruined leather pants while shopping, just like a good American—didn’t quite do it, but a little duct tape fixed that right up. The .45 ammunition had been reasonably cheap, and as soon as I put it in my basket I’d felt soothed.

Whoever I was, I didn’t like being unarmed. Or short of ammo. I was hoping the modifications on the gun hadn’t made it unable to fire a basic clip, but there it was.

I found a place on the edge of the barrio. Some clear instinct warned me not to go any further into that tangle of streets, so I just picked a likely-looking hotel and paid for two nights. Cash up front, no ID requested or given. It was the kind of place usually rented by the hour, and after about 2 p.m. it started doing a brisk trade. Footsteps, soft cries, some screams, doors opening and closing. I didn’t listen too close. It was bad enough that my hearing was jacked up into the red, and I could smell every single person who had ever used this tiny room.

Sirens. Jackhammers. Traffic.

At least the shower worked. It was tepid, but there was decent water pressure. The drain almost clogged, sand and gunk sliding off me in sheets. I didn’t bother with the towels. Who knew what vermin they were carrying? Instead I wrung my hair out and air-dried. The wheezing air conditioner didn’t help very much against an egg-on-the-sidewalk sort of day, a glare of heavy sunlight golden against the barred window. It was like being in prison, only with a door that locked on your side.

Which meant it wasn’t very much like prison at all.

Once I was dressed and the gun was checked, cleaned with a just-bought kit, and set on the flimsy bolted-down nightstand, I lay down on top of the cheap chintz bedspread and let out a long sigh. The ruined, filthy clothes were in a plastic bag; I’d dump them elsewhere. Something told me it was best to leave no traces.

My hair was already drying, raveling up into dark curls. I was pale, and the face in the mirror was nothing special except for the mismatched eyes. Long, thin nose, mouth pulled tight and thin, bruise-colored shadows under said eyes almost reaching down to the prominent cheekbones. I looked half starved. I was hungry again.

Who the hell am I?

Evidence: one silver ring with Cyrillic script inside, one gun, one weird gemlike thing implanted in my right wrist. Speed and strength enough to take on four men without breaking a sweat. Of course, there was the little matter of Martin Pores and his vanishing Mercury, but if I had just dug my way up out of a shallow grave maybe I’d hallucinated that bit and just wandered around dreaming of diner food.

I couldn’t rule that out.

The only other thing was the tattoo. A black tribal-looking scorpion, high up on the inside of my right thigh. It itched and tingled, but maybe that was only because I’d scrubbed at it, thinking it was dirt.

My hands were capable and callused. My battered feet were healed, too. No sign of the bloody mess they’d been after walking miles of highway. Even if I’d just been wandering around in a hallucination, I’d been shoeless and bleeding. But now you couldn’t tell.

For some reason, I turned my head and looked at the window. My hair felt weird. Like there should have been something in it. Lots of little somethings digging into the back of my head. Tiny gleams, little hard things.

For just a moment I had it, but it slipped away again. Frustration rose hard and hot in my throat, I swallowed it.

I knew my first name. I knew I didn’t have a problem killing someone, but I preferred not to.

At least, not when they’re human. When they’re something else…

Something else?

“Maybe I’m insane.” My own voice caught me off guard, hit the flimsy walls and bounced back to me. “That’s an option, too. Consider all the alternatives, Kismet.”

Kismet?

Another light turned on inside my head. Jill Kismet.

That’s who I am. But who is she?

I waited, but nothing else came up. It was daylight. Sleepytime, because daylight was…safe.

I tested that thought. It felt right. “Daylight’s for sleeping,” I whispered. “Night is when I work.”

Well, that was comforting to know. Or not.

I closed my eyes, told the gnawing in my belly to go away, and waited for dusk.

It was as good a plan as any.

5

I reached down with my left hand, slowly. Pushed my right sleeve up, heavy leather dried stiff with blood and other things. Unsnapped the buckle. Dropped the cuff on the floor, and turned my wrist so she could see.

The air left her all in a rush, as if she’d taken a good, hard sucker punch. “Jesus,” she finally whispered, the sibilants lasting a long time. “Jill—”

“This stays between us.” I was now back to sounding like myself, clear and brassy. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender. “I’m going to take care of it.”

She didn’t disbelieve me, not precisely. “How the hell are you going to do that?”

I shrugged.

She read it on my face, and another sharp exhale left her. “And if…”

I suppose I should have been grateful that she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. So I answered it anyway. “If it doesn’t work, Anya, you will have to hunt me down. No pity, no mercy, no nothing. Kill me before I’m a danger to my city. Kill Perry, too. Burn him, scatter the ashes as far as you can. Clear?”

She grabbed the absinthe bottle. Tipped it up, took a good, long, healthy draft, her throat working. “Shit.”

“Promise me, Anya Devi. Give me your word.” Now I just sounded weary. My cheek twitched, a muscle in it committing rebellion. The scar cringed under the assault of sunlight, I kept it out. The pain was a balm.

She lowered the bottle. Wiped the back of her mouth with one hand. “You have my word.” Quietly.

I dropped my right hand. With my left, I pulled the Talisman up. Freed the sharp links from my hair, gently. It was hard to do one-handed, but I managed. I took six steps, laid the Eye on the table. The sunsword quivered. “For Gilberto. Will you…”

“You don’t even have to ask. I’ll train him.”

Then she offered me the bottle.

Tears rose hot and prickling. I pushed them down. Took a swallow, the licorice tang turning my stomach over and my cracked lips stinging. When I handed it back to her, she didn’t wipe the mouth of the bottle. Instead, her gaze holding mine, she lifted it to her lips, too.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Hard, so hard I tasted blood. The thought that it would be tinged with black made my stomach revolve again. There were so many things I wanted to say. Things like Thank you, or even, I love you.

Because I do. We are lonely creatures, we hunters. We have to love each other. We are the only ones who understand, the only ones who will ever understand.

Except I wasn’t a hunter anymore, was I?

“I need a car,” I croaked. “It won’t be coming back.”

When I woke, the dream faded. For a second I had everything, it trembled inside my head…then it was gone. And I needed to go, too. Dusk was rising, and something told me the hotel might not be…safe. The need to get out and move itched under my skin.

I found out something else, too: I liked heights. I especially liked gliding along rooftops like a ghost, peering into the streets below. Looking for something I couldn’t define while dusk rose from every corner, cloaking the city in peculiar static heat, the rising wind bringing me an oddly familiar tang of river as everything exhaled.

Preparing for the plunge into darkness.

Everything about it was familiar. Even the shapes of the city streets, the arterial bloodflow of traffic, the quiet neighborhoods and the back alleys, the parts that lit up only when the light failed. And yet, everything was unfamiliar—the sneakers were too light, and I felt oddly naked. Like I should have more, a heavy weight on my shoulders and something flapping at my ankles, something on my face and those little weights tied into my hair. Not to mention the fact that my left hand kept dropping to my side like it expected to find another gun. Or something else.

The city revolved inside my head. I knew the street names, sometimes only after I dropped down to their level and looked around a bit. The town clung to the banks of the river, a big granite Jesus on top of a hospital downtown spread his arms in a menacing blessing, nightclubs pounded and weird things skittered in the shadows. Every building greeted me with a secret smile, little bits of the geography whirling like snowflakes until they settled against the rest of my mental map.

It was next to the granite Jesus, looking out over all those tiny dots of light, that something else stirred inside my aching head. I crouched in Christ’s spreadeagle shadow, watching the very last dregs of light swirl out of the sky, and sniffed the wind. Even in summer, nights out in the desert can get chilly. No trace of moisture in the air, but a thin faint thread of something candyspiced and wicked tickled my nose.

What the hell’s that? Half-rising from the crouch, keeping to cover, I almost swayed because I didn’t have a counterweight hanging behind me to keep me steady. A cloak of stillness folded over me, my pulse dropping, my entire body chilling. Gooseflesh rose hard like little rubbery fists under my skin, I ignored it.

Follow that. It’s not supposed to be here.

I was moving before I knew it, bolting across the rooftop, the world around me blurring. Hit the edge going full speed, a moment of weightlessness, and smacked the pavement stories below with a crack like a shotgun and a breathless feeling of holy shit did I just do that?

I would’ve been laughing with crazy joy, if not for the gun unholstering itself and the sudden fierce buzzing in my right arm, like a band of metallic flies was breaking for the surface of an infection. Right at my wrist, too. It pulled me along on a reel of silk, I flashed through a deserted alley and straight up a brick wall, barely touching the rough surface, my left hand catching at the top and heaving me over with little effort.

It was like flying. And I might’ve liked some time to enjoy it before I collided with a long tall thin thing out of a nightmare, its flesh glowing waxen-pale as it snarled, flying backward with its legs and arms drawn in, spiderlike. Its eyes glowed with a powdery sheen, and the thing it had been crouching over was a rag of bloody bone and meat that had once been a human being.

Trader. Put him down quick, Jill. But not so quick you can’t question him.

Well, at least now I had a goal.

He smashed through two struts, snapping them like matchsticks, and the strength flooding my veins was definitely bolting up my right arm from the…thing, the gem, whatever it was. I was on him in a hot heartbeat, punching him twice and something cracking in his torso; we skidded and a lick of hot pain went up my arm. Skin erased by concrete, the smell of blood, and the Trader’s chin jutted forward. His teeth were sharklike points, steaming saliva dripping and foaming, and we hit a retaining wall with a sound like a good hard break on a pool table. Something snapped in my side just like the struts, the pain was a spur. His teeth buried themselves in my shoulder, grating on bone, I screamed. Not with the pain.

No. I screamed in pure frustration. I knew what to do, but I didn’t have the tools to do it. I didn’t have my knives, or my coat, or—

The gun bucked in my hand, its roar oddly muffled. A hole opened in his back, the exit wound blossoming obscenely. The Trader howled through his mouthful of my flesh, blood squirting and whatever venom he had on those sharp triangular teeth burning as it sizzled, spattering my neck.

He didn’t quit.

I shot him again, twisting, and the thought—thank God for judo, Jillybean, get him good—seemed completely normal. Another hole opened in his back. Why was he still moving? Squeezed the trigger again, and his torso was mangled now. Another hole opened in his back, this one spattering and spraying wider than the first two. A mist of copper droplets hung in the air.

I got lucky.

The flat, shine-dusted eyes glazed. He twitched, teeth grinding in the ruin of my shoulder, and I let out a sound that probably would’ve haunted a nightmare or two if there was anyone around to hear. It took working the gun barrel into his mouth and cracking the jaw to get the teeth to loosen up as his body twitched and jerked. I jammed it further back—he was still twitching—and squeezed the trigger again, the roar way too close for comfort.

The back of its head evaporated.

Corruption raced through its tissues, little veins of dust spilling from a crackglaze like fine porcelain glued back together and unceremoniously busted again.

Would’ve been easier with my knives. Where are my fucking knives? It didn’t matter. I scrambled out of his slackening embrace, my sneakers squishing and sliding in a tide of brackish fluid. It was blood. But the edges of the red fluid held a taint of black, hungrily threading through and turning it to dust as the body twitched and jerked, heels drumming in a weird dance against the rooftop, the mangled head spilling brainmeal as the neck twisted. My ribs flickered; heaving breaths shaking me like wet laundry. I hit one of the listing iron struts reaching up like fingers—it was bent crazily where he’d gone right through it.

Yes, I could see now it was a he. He’d been naked, and his genitals were altered, too. Barbed and spiked, like…I don’t even know what like.

They always go for body mods. Part of the personality of someone who’ll trade their soul away. I know that. It was a relief to find something I did know for sure. Even if this was weird as fuck.

I was making a whistling sound. Hyperventilating. Something inside me clamped down, made my pulse and respiration calmer, my eyes locked on the twitching, disintegrating body.

You must watch death you make, a man whispered from my soupy, darkened memory. Is only way, milaya.

Mikhail. I remembered his name, now, with a lurching mental effort. Sweat stood out, cold and slick, all over me. The gun was steady, pointed at the swiftly rotting corpse as if it might take a mind to get up for round two.

You never know. You just never know.

My shoulder burned, but I ignored it. The gun didn’t waver. So this was what I did. I leapt off multistory buildings like I was stepping off a patio. I found weird smells. I got into fights on rooftops.

I killed things that shouldn’t exist.

The gem on my wrist glowed softly.

When you’re ready.

Is that what he’d meant, my blue-eyed breakfast-buying hallucination? Was I having another hallucination now?

That’s the trouble with waking up in your own grave. A whole lot of weird shit suddenly seems pretty reasonable.

Maybe that wasn’t your grave. Maybe your name isn’t Jill. Maybe Mikhail is something else. Can’t assume. That’s what he said, all the time. “Do not ever assume. Is quickest way to get ass blown sideways.”

I stared at the bubbling mass until it was clear it wasn’t going to get up and come after me again. The night air was full of traffic sounds, faraway sirens, whispered secrets. My shoulder had stopped bleeding. When I looked down, craning my neck, the bubbling pink froth squeezing out of the flesh as it knit itself back together sizzled a little, eating at the T-shirt. Bile whipped the back of my throat, I forced it down by swallowing. Bad idea, because then it hit my stomach and revolved. I was kind of glad I hadn’t eaten anything, because I heaved once before I got myself back together and used the spar behind me to muscle my way back to standing. My knees definitely felt gooshy.

The next step was examining the victim and looking for evidence. Like a cop.

Not a cop. A hunter. You do what the cops can’t.

My own voice, hard and clear, addressing a class of bright-faced boys and girls in blue dress uniforms.

I will be blunt, rookies. You’ll all be required to memorize the number for my answering service, which will page me. Pray you never have to use that number. Three or four of you will have to. A few of you won’t have time to, but you can rest assured that when you come up against the nightside and get slaughtered, I’ll find your killer and serve justice on him, her, or it. And I will also lay your soul to rest if killing you is just the beginning.

“Holy fuck,” I whispered. The city whispered and chuckled.

I shuffled like an old woman, back to the victim. There was a pile of clothing—workman’s boots, overalls, a red plaid shirt, a billfold in one of the pockets. A nice wad of fifties and hundreds that I took without compunction, ID showing a sullen, lean face—it was dark up here, but I had no trouble picking out the features of the thing I’d just killed. Back when it had been human, its name had been Eric Allen Dodge, and he lived in the Cruzada district. Staring at the address gave me a map of the city, different routes I could take to get out to his house if I needed to give it a looksee. There was one more thing, and I held it while I crouched to look at the rag of meat and bone he’d been hunched over when I hit him.

The victim was female. There was enough of her left to tell, mostly because the breasts were chopped free and laid to one side and her plumbing was oddly untouched.

He must’ve been saving that for last. My gorge rose again. What did it say about me that I could guess?

Not enough blood on the roof, so he’d killed her elsewhere and brought the body here. Her heart, a fist-sized lump of flesh, was set neatly aside with her tatas. There were other bits, something that was probably her liver, long strings of guts. Her face had been savaged. About all I could tell was that she’d probably been dishwater blonde or light brunette; her shoulder-length hair was matted with clotted blood and filth. White slivers of teeth poked through the hamburger of what was left of her features.

Her left hand. A gleam of gold—wedding ring, on the third finger. Just where silver rested on my own left hand.

“Do svidanye,” I murmured, and looked at the only other thing that’d been in Dodge’s wallet.

It was a plain, thick, dove-gray business card. MONDE NUIT, it said, and an address out near the meatpacking district. I knew exactly where the meatpacking district was, and the location seemed…familiar.

More than familiar.

Wasn’t this just my lucky night.

6

The place looked foul. The atmosphere over it had thickened like a bruise, my left eye smarting and watering as it untangled layer after layer of rotting cheesecloth. Etheric bruising, my helpful unmemory piped up. That means it’s a haunt. You know what a haunt is, right? A place where wild animals go to feed. There’s ’breed in there, and Traders. You need silver.

Silver. My right hand flashed up, touched my hair. That’s what should be there. Silver charms. Tied in with red thread. It was traditional.

Doesn’t help me now, though.

I loitered at the edge of the parking lot, sunk in shadows. There was brush here, and I crouched easily, sometimes moving to keep muscles from stiffening, sometimes utterly still and watching. The place looked familiar—a long, low building, parking lot shading to gravel at the edges, a couple of gorillas at the door and a line waiting to go in. Faint thumping bass reached me as I studied the shapes of the people in line. They moved…oddly. Scary quicksilver grace or twitching almost-stasis, and even at this distance I could see the twisting under the surface of their normal shapes. The twisting threatened to give me a headache until I figured out I could simply make a note of it and it would stop bothering me. I just had to acknowledge it.

Someone in there knows who I am.

But these were things like the thing I’d killed on the roof. Wrong. And very, very bad. I had no silver. Just the business card and—

A long black limousine took a right into the parking lot, crunching on gravel before bumping inelegantly up onto cracked pavement. The line twittered and whispered with excitement. The car glowed, wet light from the tangle of red neon over the building’s front sliding over its sleek flanks. My focus narrowed and I leaned forward, coming up out of the crouch as if compelled. My body obeyed smoothly, but my right wrist twinged. I glanced down, but the gem set in the skin was the same, a colorless sparkle. The wind touched my hair, playing with the curls, cool with the flat metal tang of river water, the desert’s sand-baked exhale picking up the water and vanishing.

The limo banked easily, like a small plane, and one of the bouncers stepped forward to open the door. I took another two steps, gravel oddly soundless underfoot. My right hand touched the gun butt, fingers running over it like they expected to read Braille.

A pale head. He rose out of the car on the other side, and a rippling sigh of excitement went through the line. I moved forward, impelled, cutting through a line of dusty parked cars. The limousine scorched, dirt-free, the only thing in the lot that didn’t look tired or filthy. My hand curled around the gun, but I didn’t draw it yet. The ring on my left hand ran with blue light, a seashine gleam.

They became aware of me in stages, as if I was a storm moving through from the mountains. First the eerie-graceful part of the line, with their seashell hips and liner-drenched eyes, stilled. Their heads came up, and sculpted nostrils flared. Cherry-glazed lips parted, and a collective exhale lifted from them along with a bath of nose-tingling corruption.

They were beautiful, but under that beauty lay the twisting.

The jerky, oddly-shaped ones were next. They hissed, lips lifting and sharp-filed teeth showing, some of them crouching. One of them, a broad wide manshape dressed in a caricature of a construction worker’s plaid shirt and Carhartts, his work boots stained with something dark and fetid, actually growled. The sound rose in a rumble like boulders grinding together, and some sure instinct made me pause, staring at him. Yellow eyes, unholy foxfire in the irises and the pupils flaring and constricting like a cobra’s head. He tensed as his knees slowly bent.

He’s getting ready to spring.

Movement. The pale head of hair was approaching. They cringed and fell back from him, but I didn’t look. I stared at the Trader, my fingers slowly tightening on the gun. If he jumped me I had some running room and cover in the parking lot. Maybe I could tangle them up and—

There was a blur of motion, cream-colored linen streaking. A pale clawed hand flashed out, and the construction worker fell sideways, arterial spray blooming high and red. The drops hung in a perfect arc, and I saw each one was tinged with that tracery of black, hungrily gobbling at the fluid as it splashed.

Holy shit. I stared.

He stepped out of the way, polished wingtips gleaming just like the car, and my gaze snapped to him. The gun left its holster with a whisper, and my arm was straight and braced.

Pallid hair in a layered razor cut. Blue eyes, and the face wasn’t beautiful. He looked normal—average lips, average cheekbones, an average all-American nose. The suit was linen, sharply-creased and expensive, and the eyes were bright blue. He regarded me with pleasant, cheerful interest, and I blinked before my left eye gave a twinge and I caught a glimpse of the twisting rippling under his flawless skin. A wine-red tie, he lifted his right hand and touched the half-Windsor knot, as if it had been knocked a millimeter out of place. Taller than me, his shoulders braced and his hips narrow, my mouth suddenly filling with copper adrenaline and my pulse dropping into a low steady rhythm.

Because this was a face I knew.

His left hand twitched. The fingers drew up like claws, and his paleness was a shade or two darker there. Something had happened to that hand, something my brain shied away from even as it threatened to plunge through the fog and remember. A spark popped from my ring’s silver surface, photoflash blue.

“I know you.” My lips were numb, but I simply sounded wondering. “From…” Words failed me, balked and twisted away. “From somewhere. I know you.”

He studied me for another long moment. His smile widened.

He actually grinned. Pearly teeth, very sharp but very normal as well. It was a television newscaster’s beaming, wide and practiced. Those blue eyes lit up, and another ripple went through the crowd.

“Of course you know me.” Even his voice was reassuringly normal. Bland as the rest of him. “Our darling little Kismet, returned. How lovely.” He stepped forward off the curb, but the bruisers looming behind him—one with a submachine gun, the other just a pile of over-yeasted muscle—didn’t move. I almost twitched, but he made a soothing noise. A low exhale, his tongue clicking as if I was an animal to be gentled. “You look beautiful.”

7

I twitched outright this time, nervously, the gun tracking him. He paid no attention, heel-and-toeing it across the concrete as if we were on a dance floor. He only stopped when I took a restless step sideways, and that brought him up short. But he leaned forward, balanced on his toes, his entire body focusing on me.

“My lovely,” he whispered. “My own. Of course I know you. What have they done to you?”

They? Whoever it was left me in the desert. In a grave. I rotted, but I came back.

No. That wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t come back. I’d been sent.

“They sent me back. To…I don’t know.” It was work to whisper. My throat was suddenly dry. Queasy heat boiled through my stomach, and I was suddenly aware the entire crowd of them was too still to be human.

If they jump you now, a clear cold voice warned me, you’re not going to have an easy time of it. You’re not even really armed. Just this gun with useless ammunition. You need silver. And lots of it.

Well, it was a fine time to remember that. And what did this have to do with the thing on the rooftop and the flayed, opened-up body, its organs set neatly aside?

I backed up, even more nervously. One step, two. He kept leaning forward.

“Don’t.” His unwounded hand came forward. The body of the Trader behind him slumped, twitching and jerking as corruption raced through its tissues. “Don’t leave, dear one. Come inside. You look hungry.”

What a coincidence. I was suddenly starving, an empty blowtorch-hole in my guts. I examined his face. Whatever lived underneath that skin rippled.

It didn’t look good, and the business card in the wallet of a murderous thing was not an endorsement. But…he was familiar. Whoever he was, I knew him.

That doesn’t mean he’s any good.

Did I have any other option?

My gun lowered slightly. The night exhaled around me, dangerous sharp edges and the neon glaring, the hunger suddenly all through me. My right wrist twitched, a fishhook under the skin yanking restlessly.

“That’s it,” he crooned. “Come inside. There’s a bed, and sharp shiny things to make you feel safer. You want knives, don’t you.”

A guilty start almost made it to the surface. I stared at him.

His smile widened just a notch. “And a gun or two. And a long, long black coat. And shining chiming things to tie in your lovely hair.” His tongue flicked out and touched his bloodless lower lip. In the uncertain ruddy light it was a startling wet cherry-red, rasping against the skin. That quick little flicker made me nervous again, and I sidled another step. That brought him forward in a rush, fluidly, his bones moving in ways a human’s shouldn’t.

Even that was familiar. Half-disgust boiled under my breastbone. The other half was something I couldn’t name. “Perry.” I found his name. But nothing else. It was like thinking through mud. “You’re Perry.”

His irises glowed, sterile, cold blue. Thin threads of indigo slid through the whites of his eyes, a vein-map. His pupils dilated a little. “At your service. In every conceivable way, Kiss. That’s what I call you. A pretty name for a pretty girl. Come. There’s food. And drink. And a place to rest.” His head cocked slightly. “And answers. You would like answers, wouldn’t you? Your perennial plaint: Tell me why.” A short, beckoning motion, his long, expressive fingers flicking. “You’ll be under my protection, darling one. Nothing to fear. Just come, and let me soothe you.”

It sounded good. Better than good. For a moment something else trembled under the surface of my memory, but it retreated again. Maddening, the feeling that I should know. That I should understand, instead of pushing myself blindly forward from place to place. The ring was warm, a forgiving touch against my flesh.

The gun twitched. My finger eased off the trigger. It lowered slightly. “First tell me something.”

“Oh, anything.” He eased toward me again, supple and weightless as if he was simply painted on the air. “Anything you like.”

I searched through every question I had. There were too many of them crowding me. His pupils swelled, and the roaring sound filtered into my head again. The wasps, eating and buzzing, little tiny insect feet prodding as they crawled over me again. A galvanic shudder racked me. The gun dropped even further.

“Who am I?” I whispered. “What the hell are you?”

The laugh was another rumble, as if a freight train was passing me by again. It came from him, a subvocal roar, plucking at the strings under the surface of the world, and his fingers closed around my arm. Everything in me cringed away from that touch, but his fingers were warm and exquisitely gentle.

“You are my Kiss.” Very gently, experimentally, he pulled on my arm. The ring sparked again, but it was unimportant. I followed, numb, the wasp-roar filling my skull like the cotton wool of illness. “And I, my darling? I am Legion. I am unconquerable fire.” His grin was absolutely cheerful, and oddly terrifying, but all the soothing in the world was in that voice. “But don’t worry. I am also your humble host this momentous evening. You’ve arrived just in time.”

He led me past the bouncers, the submachine gun dangling as they watched, slack faced. The crowd muttered, hissing, but he paid them no notice. The doors were open, a red velvet curtain hanging in tattered folds, and he drew me through it and into the pounding music. I could barely gasp in a breath before the noise folded over my head like wings, and his grip on my arm never faltered.

I had a confused impression of swirling bodies on a dance floor lit with migraine stabs of brittle light, a monstrosity of a bar with two slim male shapes handing out what could have been drinks in twisted sparkling glasses, the press of the crowd alternately feverish and cold. The whirling crowd snarled, pressing back against each other as stipples of light flashed around me. Those little sparkles weren’t from the disco ball—and who the hell has a disco ball nowadays? It was a slowly spinning planet, ponderous, a great silver fruit that pulsed with malevolence.

No, those little sparkles were half-unseen spikes surrounding me, their tips fluorescing up into the visible. An aura.

An exorcist’s aura. Be careful, Jill.

I wished that voice had spoken up before. I’d killed a thing on the rooftop, a thing like these things. Now here I was in the middle of them, nowhere near as terrified as I should be.

This was normal. And what did that say about me?

It had something to do with him. With his hand on my arm and the thrumming growl coming through him, the noise that carried us both through the press of the crowd.

There was an iron door behind a frayed red velvet rope, and as soon as he pulled me through and the door shut with a clang I found myself on a staircase, going up.

So far so good. I’d been here before, several times. The gun dangled in my nerveless hand. He drew me up the stairs, and under the bass-throb attack of the music played at jet-takeoff levels I swear I heard him humming. A happy little tune, wandering along like a drunken sailor past alleys full of cold, dark eyes.

Another door crouched at the top, and he pushed it open. White light flooded the stairwell, and I blinked.

The room was white, too. An expanse of white carpet, a mirrored bar to one side, a huge swan bed swathed in bleached mosquito netting, a bank of television screens flickering at odd intervals. Some of them were dark, some fuzzed with static; others showed the club’s interior and exterior, flicking rapidly through surveillance angles. Still more held news feeds, footage of explosions and disasters shuddered soundlessly. Once the door slid shut it was eerily quiet, a faint thumping through the floor all that remained of the noise below, a dozing animal’s heartbeat.

He led me across the room, pushed me down on the bed. I sat without demur, my feet placed side by side like good little soldiers. He finally let go of my arm, stepped back, and brushed at stray strands of my hair that had come loose.

I didn’t flinch. I just waited for clues, my eyes fixed on the blue gleam running under the ring’s surface.

“There.” The smile was still wide, but he looked pained. “That is…perfect. Just perfect. I’ve often thought that if I could have you sit just there, just so, all the problems would fade into insignificance.”

“Problems?” I cradled the gun in my lap. The buzzing wouldn’t go away. Rattling, chrome wasps in a bottle.

The thought that some of the carnivorous insects might have been left inside, maybe in my sinus cavities, nibbling at my brain, sent a rippling jolt through me. The bed made a soft shushing sound, silk sliding and netting twitching. The bottles racked above the mirrored bar were all clear glass. Some held gray smoke, shifting in screaming-face shapes. Others held jewel-glowing liquids, and the harsh white light stroked them.

“I have no problems, darling. Now that you’re in my sight. Apple of my eye, flesh of my flesh.” He stalked to the bar, his wingtips crushing the pristine carpet. “And you must be hungry. One moment.”

My breathing had turned shallow. The horrific buzzing rattled my skull, I hunched my shoulders and went still. The air was curiously flat in here. The bed smelled faintly of fabric softener, but that was it. There was nothing else. It was the equivalent of a blank page.

There’s something you’re not seeing. Look deeper. Look again.

If I could get the meat inside my head to stop sounding like an overworked lawnmower on crack, I would. The sound crested, filling my bones, shaking me like a terrier with a toy in its sharp white needle-teeth. My ribs heaved, lungs burning, as if I was chasing something across rooftops.

The business card was crumpled, but I lifted it anyway. It still said the same thing.

Think. A card in a wallet. Doesn’t mean much. Or it could mean everything. Which one are you betting on?

“Et voila,” he murmured. A flicker of motion jerked my head up, and I stared.

In the middle of the arctic expanse of carpet, a table had bloomed. Covered by a fall of snowy linen, a bloody half-closed rose in a vase like fluted ice, two places set with exquisitely simple porcelain. Forks and knives and spoons of heavy, pale golden metal. A bleached, brassy candleholder like a twisted tree held thin white tapers. Their flames were colorless, standing straight up.

“Now.” He indicated the chair with its back to the bed, a high-backed, spine-shouldered piece of pallid metal with a cushion of faded-red velvet. “I have no violinist, and no apples. But I think we shall do very well. Come, sit.”

The buzzing receded like a sand-gurgling wave. I crushed the business card in my fist, suddenly very sure I didn’t want the twisting under his skin to see it.

“I.” My throat closed up. I cleared it, a harsh sound rustling the mosquito netting. “I, ah, have questions.”

“Of course you do.” He set down two water-clear champagne flutes. “And I’m in a position to give you answers. Plenty of them, too.”

“Then start.” My voice didn’t belong to me. There was some other woman using it, her mouth twisted half up into a pained, professional smile and her hand ready on the gun in my lap. She peered out through my eyes, taking note of everything in the room and chalking it all up on mental lists—how easy it would be to get her hands on it, how much damage it would do, what her chances were. Percentages and likelihoods, all whirring inside our shared brain like clockwork gears. “Who buried me in the desert?”

“Well.” A dusty bottle appeared out of nowhere. Its cork popped deftly free with a wrenching, violated sound, and the fizzing, pale-amber fluid poured in a couth stream into the flutes. “Hardly dinner conversation, Kiss. But I suppose you have a right to know.” He set the bottle down with a click and picked up both glasses, cocking his head as he stared at me. His tongue flicked again, a blot of cherry-red, shocking against the paleness. “When I saw you last, you were dead.”

“When was that?” She shifted slightly, the woman suddenly using my body, and cursed us both for putting us right in the most vulnerable location in the whole damn room.

“Oh, about two months ago.” His teeth flashed, lips parting. “What would you like for dinner, my dear?”

I shifted again, uneasily. I was starving, but that other woman was warning me not to take a single sip or bite of anything he’d give me.

Where had she been when Martin Pores was feeding me?

“Knives.” I swallowed hard. “You said knives. And…a coat.”

“Don’t be uncivilized. Sit over here.” Faintly annoyed now, a shadow between those feathered eyebrows. The rippling under his skin had quieted, but the indigo threading through the whites of his eyes warned me.

My legs tensed. They carried me upright, and the gun dropped to my side. His teeth looked a lot sharper now.

So did the rest of him. A shadow of bladed handsomeness passed over his face, his eyes burning.

One step, two, my sneakers making little dry sounds against the carpet. Everything up here was new, freshly unwrapped. Like the whole stage had just been waiting for me to step onto it, under a brilliant skull-white spotlight.

“Right here.” He indicated the chair. “That’s a good girl. We’ll have a nice, happy dinner. The first of many.”

Does that mean I’ve never eaten here before? I think that’s a fair guess. And I’ll bet I had my reasons. The time for me to make any move was narrowing, ticking away in microseconds. The gun twitched, my pulse thudding along even and sonorous like a deep underground river, my right wrist suddenly burning. The buzzing had moved out into my fingertips, and it fought to bring the gun up, squeeze off a shot and let—

Footsteps. High and hard. The door burst open, and I whirled, gun trained on the new arrival.

8

Perry was suddenly there, slim pale fingers tensing and crackling at the man’s throat. Man, or boy, he was so slight I couldn’t tell. His ears came up to high points and his teeth were only bluntly human, but dapples of shadow-bruising ran over his skin, and his hair writhed in fat brown dreadlocks like it had a mind of its own.

He choked, and Perry hissed. The sound was freight trains rubbing together at midnight in a cold deserted yard, overstressed metal squealing in pain.

Helletöng, I realized. The language of the damned.

Which gave me all sorts of interesting ideas about the position I was in. The hiss-roar died away, and the Trader’s face turned an unpleasant purplish.

“I thought I said I wasn’t to be disturbed.” Perry cocked his head, each word quiet and level. “This had better be—”

“—caught—” The Trader choked again, and Perry eased up.

“What?” More ’töng, plucking at the strings below the surface of the world. I could glimpse the spreading stain, corruption welling up and torquing reality one way or another, my blue eye suddenly hot and dry. “Speak up,” Perry snarled.

He probably could, if you weren’t holding him a foot off the floor and cutting off his air. But I kept that thought to myself. It would probably be unhelpful in this situation.

It was looking like I was going to need all the help I could get. Lights were turning on inside my head, flickering in rapid fire, and the things they showed weren’t very nice at all.

“Caught one,” the Trader wheezed as the fingers in his throat loosened slightly. “We caught one. Watching us.”

“Indeed.” Perry went still for a few seconds. A hot, dry draft reeking of spoiled honey brushed the room. Even immobile, you could see his molecules trying to escape, jittering away. Under his suit coat his back shifted, something straining inside the shape he wore. Horror crawled up into my throat, my brain shivering away from the suggestion underneath. Like a twisted alien body under a blanket, so horribly wrong a chill walks up your spine with ice-glass feet.

I’ve seen that before, though. I survived seeing it. I know I did.

Perry glanced to the side, his profile severe and handsome, a classical statue’s long nose and relaxed mouth. His eyes scorched, and he made a sudden swift movement. A greenstick crack echoed, the Trader’s feet flailed, and the hellbreed dropped him like a dirty rag.

Bile whipped the back of my throat. My face stayed frozen, numb. Keep your pulse down. Training clamped down on my hindbrain; I could actually feel the pressure sinking in, hormonal balance mercilessly controlled, heartbeat and respiration struggling to escape those iron fingers.

Mikhail was always on me to keep my pulse down. I stared at the body as it slumped to the side, twitching and juddering, dusky corruption racing through its tissues. The naked, hairless chest, the ribs flared oddly to support different musculature, legs in a pair of fluttering black pants caked with something filthy and iron-smelling at the bottom. The stink of death-loosened sphincters ballooned out, exploding across the sterile unsmell, and I shivered.

Then I stilled, hoping that hadn’t been a mistake.

“There’s no need to fear.” Was he trying to sound soothing? Perry rolled his shoulders back in their sockets, cartilage crunching. “This will only take a moment, darling mine. You can even watch.”

He stood there, staring to the side, the indigo threads in the whites of his eyes swelling and retreating obscenely. As if expecting a reply.

I searched for something to say. Finally, I cleared my throat again. “Is that what’s called killing the messenger?”

He actually laughed, and the horrible thing wasn’t how loud it was. No, it was the sheer gleeful hatred, his lips smacking like I’d just told the world’s funniest joke. The laugh cut off in midstream as more swelling crackles slid around under his pale, perfect skin.

“You could say that.” He stepped daintily aside as the corpse’s legs jerked. “But it’s also a lesson. They shouldn’t interrupt me, not while I’m with you.” A sidelong glance, sipping at my face. “Come along. This should be…instructive.”

What else could I do? I followed.

Down on the ground floor, twenty seconds spent passing from one iron door to another along the edge of the vast belly of the Monde. The damned paid no attention, writhing against each other while the disco ball spun slightly faster and the music took on a screaming, spiked edge. I glanced out over their sea of chains and leather and slim legs, sweet curves and the bloom of powdery rot on each of them, and something else lit up inside my head.

Hunter, Jill. You’re a hunter. And these are what you kill.

Which opened up huge new vistas of contemplation I had no luxury to indulge in, because this second door gave onto a hall lit by low bloody neon tangles, crawling like worms against the wood-paneled walls, and my fingers tightened on the gun again. More doors marched down the hallway on either side, and again recognition rose to choke me. Little half-remembered scenes played out inside my skull, the woman who shared my body unlocking mental doors and throwing them open—just like Perry, his hair and clothes now dyed scarlet, chose a door on the left and flung it wide.

“Well, well, well,” he chanted, mincing into the room beyond. “What have we here? Oh, look. A stray cat.”

A cold spear went through me. Cat?

The last time I’d been here, these doors had all been standing open, torn-out teeth in a dead smile. Behind the one at the far end of the hall had been a table shattered to matchsticks, an iron throne demolished, and something hanging in silvery chains. Something horribly battered, and as I’d walked in the chains had rasped against each other, fat, dry-sliding tongues.

I stared down the hall. If I walked to the end, would I find a room where the table was put back together as if it had never been broken, mirror-polished and solid? And the throne at the end…would its metal spikes be repaired? Or would a new one have been brought in?

A low, terrible growl cut across the hallway. It was a cleaner sound than ’töng, and it turned another key inside the broken lock my head had become.

—pair of dark eyes, tawny sides moving, the sun picking out gold along a cat’s sleek lines, and he nuzzled my throat, kissing while I shook. The crisis tore through me again, and the kiss turned to a bite, pressure applied with infinite care, the skin bruising as he sucked. The neck’s erogenous in the extreme for a cat Were, and Saul—

Saul? I jolted back into myself. My lips shaped the word, but I said nothing.

He was important. My pulse sped a fraction, control clamped down, and I began to get a very bad feeling about all this.

“Hold it down. She’ll want to see this.” A low, delighted laugh, and the wasp-buzz was a dark curtain inside my head, bulging over some horrible, unknowable shape. “Oh, this couldn’t have been better if we’d planned it. Kiss?” Calling me, like a dog. “Kiss, my darling, come inside.”

I hated him calling me that. Another key, another broken lock, muscles hardening as I twisted it. The effort was both physical and mental, the gem on my wrist scorching, threads of silvery pain sliding up the nerve channels all the way to my elbow.

This time, the buzzing was a curtain of shining metallic insect bodies, and the gem on my wrist vibrated as the curtain pulled aside. Dawn rose inside my head, but it was the sterile white light of a nuclear sunrise, everything inside me turning over and shattering as consciousness flooded me.

Jill. Jill Kismet. Hunter.

The memories slammed through me all at once, my entire body locking down, muscles spasming and ruthlessly controlled. Fighting in the dark, night after night spent cleansing the city streets of things like the dancing mob in the belly of this building—and Perry, pulling the strings, our bargain sealed by a scarred lip-print on my right wrist.

I hated everything about him. Everything. But that wasn’t important right now. Training jacked my hormone balance, adrenaline a bright copper flood across my tongue, the bloody neon light flashing as my eyelashes fluttered. The ring was a scorch on my left hand, silver reacting to the etheric contamination filling this bruised, hollow place. I dropped back into myself with a thud, and heard Perry laugh again. A low, very satisfied chuckle, a razor against numb flesh. There was a wet sound, and the growl cut short as if a door had slammed in the middle of it.

I knew that sound. It was a Were. Probably a cat Were, too. He’d just been punched in the gut.

If there was a Were here at the Monde, he was looking at a whole lot of hurt. And if it was who I thought it was…

…I couldn’t let that happen.

9

Immobility shattered. My eyes flicked open. I drew in a deep breath spiced with hellbreed corruption, the copper stink of blood, and a sudden colorless fume of rage.

I moved.

The door slammed open, hitting a wide-load Trader—chunky-thick, plaid shirt, bare feet misshapen and horned with calluses—with a sound like an axe sinking into good, dry cordwood. I twisted in midair, gun roaring, and the second Trader—slim, dark, head exploding in a mess of bone and brain—folded down. A head shot, and a good one, but how I was going to deal with Perry was a whole ’nother ball of wax. I landed, whirling as Perry made a sound like a frozen mountainside calving, chunks of overstressed icy stone groaning and tearing free.

The room was small, a brass drain hole glinting in the middle of the shallow-sloped concrete floor. Soaked in the neon glow, my foot flicked out, catching the third Trader—blonde, female, modded out with claws and blood-glowing compound eyes—just under the chin with a jolt and a sound of bone breaking, like glass hammers shattering in a burlap bag. Should really have boots for this sort of work. The thought was there and gone in a flash, because I dropped, instinct taking over as a pale smear bulleted past me. It was Perry, snarling, his hands outstretched, and if I hadn’t shed momentum and hit the ground he would’ve crashed right into me. As it was, he hit the wall with a crack that might’ve been funny if he hadn’t still been making that huge rock-crushing noise.

The man they’d been holding up slumped, his body heading shapelessly for the floor. I grabbed him and flung us both backward toward the door as Perry slid down the wall. Spiderweb cracks radiated out from the crater he’d put in the dark-smeared wood paneling, and a pair of chains hanging on the opposite wall jangled musically, little spots of white gleaming on their thin surfaces.

Orichalc-tainted titanium chains. I had no time to think about what they would do to whatever they would chain down in here.

Time to go to work, Jillybean.

The glass tangles lighting the room swayed, shadows dipping crazily. My sneakers slipped, and I felt, of all things, a brief burst of silver-sharp irritation. Would never happen in boots, why couldn’t they bury me with my boots on? The gem on my right wrist turned scorching, a tide of wine-red strength flooding up the bones and veins, jolting in my shoulder and roaring through the rest of me.

I was hoping it wasn’t Perry’s force I was drawing off. Whose else could it be? It didn’t matter. Deal with the devil and dance another day.

Nice to know some things hadn’t changed.

Neon tubing smashed with a tinkle as I ran right into the wall across the hall, the man’s bulk surprisingly heavy. I had one hand wrapped in his skein of dark hair, the other tangled in the shredded remains of his T-shirt, and he was bleeding. The blood was red, no trace of black at its fringes, and I hauled him up. My back burned, glass slivers digging in, and warmth trickled down from broken skin.

His head tipped back, a lean dark face horribly bruised and swelling, and a heatless shock of recognition went through me.

Wait. Not Saul. “Theron!” I yelled, and pitched aside. We went down in a heap, rolling, and another part of my aching head lit up under klieg-light memory. Theron. Werepanther. Works at Mickey’s out on Mayfair. Good backup. “Get up! Let’s move!”

Which brought up a problem: I had no weapons except the gun, not even any silver-coated ammo, and another consideration surfaced, one I had no time to indulge because a massive sound rose from the room we’d just vacated.

Perry was not going to be happy. Just guess how I knew that.

What would’ve happened if I’d eaten something? A chill walked down my bloody back, but Theron was up. He shook his head, stared up at me like he didn’t quite credit what he was seeing.

“Move!” I yelled, and shoved him toward the end of the hall that gave out into the Monde’s interior. No exit the other way, and legions of the damned between us and the outside.

Fun times, Jill! Never a boring moment! Get your ass moving!

Theron took off, a graceful unerring lope much faster than I thought he’d be able to move. I skip-shuffled back just as the Trader I’d hit with the door was propelled out into the hall, wide shoulders slumped and his face a mask of black-tinged blood from his mashed nose. Somehow it had splattered everywhere, and a fresh gout stained his flapping Hawaiian shirt as he saw me and snarled, hunching like a demonic football player. His modified feet twisted so the toes splayed and great horny toenail-claws dug into the flooring.

Don’t worry about him. Worry about Perry, who’s due out any sec—

The doorway evaporated. A wash of crackling-blue hellfire burst out, unholy flames blooming with a hiss I could hear even over the pounding throb of music through the walls. The glare swallowed the crouching Trader whole, and he went up like a fatty candle.

I drove backward, legs pumping, hoping I wouldn’t tangle with the Were as we both flung ourselves for the door that would lead out into the Monde. Trigger-finger cramping, lungs burning, had to remember to breathe, steps jolting up through my hips and shoulders as my sneaker-clad feet stamped hard, I threw myself back just as Perry rounded the corner, wreathed in pale-blue livid hellfire and his bland face suddenly sharply starving-handsome again.

I didn’t hit the door because Theron had, busting it clear off its hinges with a short bark of effort, a cat’s coughing cry. So I sailed back, crashing into a knot of dance-writhing Traders, scrabbling to get up get up get UP just as the flames belled out again, little tiny fingers sinking into the wall on either side of the hole. Perry was suddenly there, filling up the space.

And he looked pissed.

10

I was up again in a hot second, my heel grinding into something soft and my elbow whapping a female Trader a good one in the face. The music was still going, and I hoped like hell Theron had already made it past the bar. He’d have only the Traders at the door to worry about then, and he could be out in the night in a moment, vanished with a Were’s speed and agility.

What was he doing here in the first place? What’s going on?

That wasn’t my problem right now. My problem was the hellbreed who stepped mincingly out of the blurring, grasping fingers of blue flame and twitched his shoulders, the air peaking in high points of disturbance behind and above him. His eyes were the same color as the hellfire, indigo spreading around the edges of the burning irises and threading down over his cheeks in a veinmap tattoo. Everything turned over inside me. I remembered something else—yellow flame dripping from my hand as I pulled on the mark on my right wrist, etheric force jolting up my shoulder, sick fury and rage twining together to fuel the fire as I burned the whole hellish mess to the ground—

I gained my balance with a huge lunging effort, raising the gun. Keep moving. More skip-shuffling back, covering ground as fast as physics would let me, the noise was massive and confusion just starting to spread out in ripples.

Two shots popped off, both of them good solid hits. Perry’s head snapped back, a gush of thin black ichor hanging in the air as time slowed down and details stood out sharp and clear. Still moving back, flicker of motion in the corner of my eye, I threw myself aside as a stick-thin male Trader in a black T-shirt and jeans leapt for me.

A dark blur hit the Trader from the side, a coughing roar cutting the sonic wall of music. Spatters of leprous light flicked as the ball overhead swung, and the mood of the crowd tipped crazily.

Theron had the Trader down, blurring through panther form into humanoid, claws tearing. The shape-between isn’t anyplace Weres linger, but even there they are beautiful, and he’d just saved my bacon.

Except I’d been planning for that hit, and now I was scrambling to recover as Perry’s head tipped back down, the ichor closing over the hurt and sealing it away. Without silver, bullets would barely slow him down.

Great.

Perry twitched his shoulders again, grinned murderously, and launched himself for me with the eerie stuttering speed of hellbreed. The crowd exploded away, the grace of confusion vanishing as awareness of the fight raced through them like ink dropped in water.

“Jill! ” Theron yelled, and I had at least the satisfaction of him knowing who I was. If we got out of here, I could ask him some questions, too.

Like how I’d ended up dead. Who had buried me. And what the bloody blue fuck was going on.

“Get out!” I screamed. “Theron! Get the fuck ou—”

Perry arrived, blinking through space, and my right wrist sent a spike of clear, hot pain all the way up my arm, detonating in my shoulder, tearing across my ribs, and jerking down my legs in one swift lunge. I spun, hip twitching out to provide momentum, my foot coming up as the gem in my flesh let out a high, crystal-stroked sound. My sneaker crashed into Perry’s jaw, force transferred and the jolt snapping something low in my right leg; red pain bolting up to my hip. Knees pulled in, the world turning over as I pushed off, deflecting him by critical degrees, and at least I was light without weapons or anything else hanging on me.

I flew.

Landed hard, breath driven out of me in a howl as my abused right leg gave way, and Theron was suddenly there. Skidding to a stop, fingers tented on the floor, bruised face a mask of effort as he snarled. I almost overbalanced, but he uncoiled with sweet grace, legs driving him up as his hand closed around my left arm and Perry tumbled through the crowd, knocking over Traders and other ’breed like ninepins. He hit them hard, too, the crunching of bones breaking and screams of the wounded drowned out the feedback squealing of the music.

Theron left the ground in a leap of such effortless natural authority I half-expected it to be easy for me too. I pushed gracelessly with both legs, trying to help, ignoring the bones grinding together in my right shin, a red firework of agony.

His grip popped my shoulder out of its socket with a high, hard burst of pain, my head snapping aside and tendons screaming, the rest of me a boneless flag flopping in the wind. We tore through the moth-eaten red velvet curtain and burst out into the cool darkness outside just as the music juddered to a halt behind us and Perry’s cheated howl shattered several chickenwire-laced, painted-black windows.

The parking lot reeled drunkenly as Theron yanked me again. A submachine gun opened up in a burst of deafening chatter, glass shattering and metal pop-pinging as bullets dug a sewing-machine trail behind us. My stretched shoulder gave another flare of deep-purple pain, a symphony of damage playing colors behind my eyelids as I tried to return fire.

This ammo won’t do any good. Been lucky so far, but luck won’t hold. Goddammit.

We hit yet again, Theron compressing like a spring, and plunged into the scrub brush at the edges of the lot. He cursed, the whisper-screaming of obscenities over a deep rumbling groan. Nobody knows where a feline Were’s purr comes from, but this was a warning growl, shaking my bones and sending a deep pulse of heat through torn muscle and abused flesh.

Behind us, screams and cries lifted into the chill night air.

Now they were hunting us.

Being carried along by a cat Were is an exotic experience, even if you can understand what’s happening to you. Being dragged by a cursing, slowly healing, very angry Werepanther was a new one even for me.

Or at least, it felt new. I hoped it was.

He skidded aside, and the dark of an alley swallowed us. I hung, almost limp, in his grasp. My entire body twitched, the meat senselessly protesting a brush with its own mortality. Stupid body, getting all worked up because I could have died.

I guess even if you’ve done it once, it’s not something you want to do again.

“Jesus,” he kept saying. “It’s you. It’s you.” Like he couldn’t believe it. Like he was relieved.

I seconded that emotion. Except I was tired, and hungry, and nothing about tonight was going in a way that could remotely be considered well.

But I knew who I was. I knew who he was, I knew what we both were, and I knew enough about Perry to guess we should keep running.

I just couldn’t figure out how I’d ended up dead.

Theron propped me against the alley wall, long sensitive fingers feeling for my shoulder. “This is gonna hurt,” he announced, and I nodded.

“Do i—” I began, but he popped the balltop of the humerus back into the socket before I could finish. I swallowed a half-scream, my teeth driving hard into my lower lip and bursts of color exploding behind my closed eyelids again.

“Sorry.” He sounded genuinely sorry, too. His breath touched my cheek, I found out my head was lolling. “Jesus Christ, Jill. It’s you.”

“So they tell me.” I tilted my head, straining my ears. They’re going to be after us. Everything on me hurt savagely, muscles twitch-screaming and bruises rising for the surface of my skin. My right wrist burned, a live coal pressed into the flesh—but the heat was strangely soothing. It didn’t feel normal. Yeah. Normal. We’ve missed that train by a mile. “We can’t stay here.”

“Where have you been?” He still had my arm, as if I might disappear if he let go. “You tell me that. Where have you been? Saul…”

I perked up at the sound of that name. “Saul? Is he all right?”

His eyes flashed gold-green for a moment, rods and cones reacting differently than a human’s at night. Then a brief sheen of orange—when Weres and ’breed get excited, the eyes get all glowy. The knowledge slid into place like I’d always known. Maybe I had.

It didn’t disturb me. Weres were safe.

I was sure of that much, at least.

“He’s…” He stared at me for a long moment, his jaw working and the bruises crawling up his face livid even in the gloom. “You…don’t remember?”

“I woke up last night in my own grave, Theron. I’m not sure what I remember. Or who.” My knees felt suspiciously weak, I leaned back into the wall. Whatever was dumped in the trash piles here reeked to high heaven, but at least it might cover up our smell. Neither of us were too fresh right now. I reeked of gunfire, rotting Trader blood, and effort, Theron of musky, unhappy cat Were and fresh blood. We both carried the sweet whiff of hellbreed corruption.

It was a heady mix, but not a particularly nice one. My shoulder throbbed, but I took stock and discovered I could fight. If I had to. And he was moving okay for a Were who’d been taken in by hellbreed.

Lucky. We were both goddamn lucky. I holstered the gun. It was next to useless against ’breed without silver-coated ammo.

But I’d find a way to make it work.

I searched for a way to explain where I’d been. I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself. “I remember some things. Others, not so much, and some things I only remember too late.” Like hating Perry. He seemed so familiar. I was too tired to even shudder. “Glad I found you.”

“Me too. They were about to…look, you don’t know anything? Where have you been?”

My pulse dropped, breathing evening out. It wasn’t relaxation—my jacked-up hearing caught the pitter-patter of hellbreed feet, too light or too heavy to be human, too fast or way too slow. Probably some Traders, too, and drawing close. “Dead, Theron. Weren’t you listening? We’ve got to get out of here, they’re looking for us.”

“You even smell different,” he muttered, but he grabbed my arm again. “I can run. You just hold on.”

“I can run—” I began to protest, but he simply yanked at me while he turned, a graceful, complex movement ending up with my arms around his throat. He straightened, and my legs came up instinctively around his middle. Just like an uncle taking a kid piggyback riding, and I was breathing in his hair.

“We’re running for the barrio,” he said over his shoulder. “Relatively safe there, even with the war.”

“War?” I took a deep breath. Cat Were, musk and wildness—familiar, but it wasn’t him I was thinking of.

Saul. Where are you, catkin?

The last thing I remembered was Galina’s face when she told me he’d been taken. By hellbreed. But there was a maddening blank spot after that, bruise-colored, aching, and blank as a dead TV monitor. I had no time to settle down and think and try to figure out what to do about it.

“War on Weres, Jill. You’ve been out a while. Things are…complex.” He tilted his head and tensed.

The skittering footsteps drew closer. The night pulled itself taut, a drumskin over vibrating hatred. “I can fight.” But I held on.

He burst into motion, bolting for the blind end of the alley. Up the wall in a breathless rush, and the city yawed underneath. Fur scraped my arms, he dropped halfway into catform, and I hugged him as tight as I could, my right wrist coming alive with sweet piercing pain. I hoped I wasn’t throttling him—and I hoped he could run fast enough.

Because a choked cry rent the darkness behind us, and I knew they’d found our trail.

11

We almost made it. The edge of the barrio was temptingly close, but there were just too many of them. They were between us and safety, and we crouched on a rooftop in the lee of a billboard for car insurance. Traffic crawled along Lluvia Avenue below, rubies one way and diamonds the other, civilians with no idea a running battle was going on above their heads.

I slid from Theron’s back as he gasped, his sides heaving. Hauling my ass around probably hadn’t done him any good.

“Catch your breath,” I told him, and slid the gun free. Even if the ammo was no good, it would at least slow the Traders down, and if I could bleed them out badly enough the corruption of their bargains would finish them off.

Hellbreed were a different proposition. But I’d think of something. “Run for the barrio. I’ll draw them off.”

“You…and your…Lone Ranger…shit.” He didn’t look good—cheesy-pale, those bruises, and if my eyes weren’t fooling me, thinner than when we’d started this whole barrel of fun. His metabolism was at scorch level to heal him and provide the speed he’d just used to cart me halfway across the city. “Never…ends…well.”

Now that sounds familiar, too. I cast an eye out over the rooftop. “Quit talking. It’s wasting breath, and I need you ready to run when I make a diversion.”

He gulped, his sides heaving, and shuddered. His breathing evened out, and he closed his eyes. “You have…no weapons. How…are—”

“I’ve got a weapon, I’ll think of something.” I checked the gun, my fingers moving with ease. The ammo clipped to my new belt, worse than useless, was still comforting. “More than one way to skin a hellbreed, Theron.”

“What do you remember?” He was perking up. This was a good hiding place. I almost didn’t want to leave it, but sooner or later they would find us. When they did, it would be ugly. He needed food, and rest, and the cold machine of calculation inside my head piped up with the thought that maybe he could tell someone who would care that I was walking around…alive? Kind of alive? Undead? Not-dead-anymore?

Did I have any friends?

“I sort of remember Galina telling me hellbreed took Saul. Not much after that. Or before, for that matter.” I sounded flip and casual, unconcerned. Don’t let him know you’re worried, too. Scanned the rooftop, crouched in a well of shadow, my ears perked for any faint hint of the things I’d spent the years since Mikhail’s death hunting. I remembered now, murderous nights and adrenaline-soaked cases, the world skating close to the edge of apocalypse with distressing regularity, and the Traders and ’breed working, busy as beavers, to send it careening over that edge.

I couldn’t kill them all. For one thing, more would replace the ones I put down, just like pimps and dealers moving into suddenly vacated territory. Always more where those come from, and hungry, too.

But I managed to kill enough to keep them slinking in the shadows, instead of swaggering. No wonder they’d all snarled at me.

And Perry, what had he been planning to do with me?

Don’t worry about that right now. Keep your attention on the roof.

To give the Were credit, he didn’t look very surprised. “Saul’s…alive. Last I saw.”

Relief exploded inside my chest, so hard I almost sagged. “Oh. Okay. Good.” But something bothered me. “Last you saw?”

“He’s in the barrio.”

Well, that wasn’t bad. Weres ran herd on the barrio’s seethe, since a girl with my skin tone could catch too much flak there. “And?”

“It’s complex, hunter. Listen—”

“Hold that thought.” I tensed, prickling silence closing over me. The first thing any apprentice learns, I heard Mikhail murmur, way back in the soup my head was threatening to become. To be quiet little snake under rock.

Apprentice. Gilberto. Lank hair, acne-pitted skin, dead eyes. My apprentice. The chain of memory pulled taut, the curtain in my head rippling, but I had no time to follow that chain into the cold deep and see what it dredged up.

Because there, at the edge of the rooftop, a shadow slunk. Lifted its wax-bald head, sweat gleaming over its naked hairless chest.

It crouched. The snuffling sounds carried clearly, and Theron had become a statue next to me, the way a cat will pause with a paw in the air when something catches its attention.

Are there more? My eyes moved, silently, the blue one hot and dry as it looked beneath the visible. The strings under the surface of the world resonated, each quivering individually as the tension in its neighbors communicated itself. Can’t see them. Doesn’t mean they’re not there.

The Trader hunched, and sniffed again. It was on all fours, its haunches higher than its head and encased in a ripped pair of faded jeans. Its face was damn near buried in the floor of the roof, and those snuffling sounds were wetly suggestive.

I couldn’t even tell if it had originally been male or female, and at this distance only a suggestion of the body modifications it had Traded for could be picked out, even with my vision on overdrive and my left eye suddenly feeding way more information than I needed directly into my brain.

“Theron,” I whispered, barely mouthing the words. “When I move, run for the barrio. Don’t argue.”

He said nothing. My right wrist hummed, a subaudible warning.

The thing snaked its head, muscle rippling oddly up its bare back. A flat shine reflected from its eyeballs, like a drift of pollen on stagnant water under a strong light. Dusted. Trader, not ’breed.

Hellbreed eyes actually glow. If you can call that diseased shine a form of “light.” There aren’t proper words for it.

Thank God.

I was barely aware of moving, streaking across the rooftop, sneakered feet slapping. The Trader’s malformed head flung up, and I saw the dustshine runneling over eyeballs dried and useless as raisins. The nose was a ruined cavity, double sinus-dishes like sinkholes, the mouth wet and open to take in more air. That mouth was slit on either side, cheeks gashed so it could open even wider. A spiked collar strapped around its skinny throat, leather and brassy metal both glowing with unholy foxfire.

That’s so it doesn’t swallow the prey, like a cormorant. I had enough time to think that before I hit with a crunch, tumbling it off the roof. It shrieked, a high panicked cry, and I shot it four times while we were still in midair. Bleed it out, rip its throat out if you can, brace yourself, Jillybean, this is gonna hurt.

I hoped Theron was running.

Hit hard, spilling to the side in a tangling roll to shed momentum, bones snapping, and the Trader’s cry cut off midway. Made enough noise. My right leg crunched with agony, my tender shoulder gave a high, sustained soprano note of overstress, my head hit concrete with a stunning crack, and I yanked on all the etheric force I could reach.

It jolted up my arm, hot and pure, a completely different sensation from the hot twisted flood of Perry’s mark. Add that to the list of things I didn’t have any goddamn time to figure out—I jackrabbited to my feet, the shattered edges of my right femur grating together, and the pain was a spur as the gem on my wrist lit up like a Christmas ornament and etheric force tied the bone back together. The sea-urchin spines of my aura, hardened by countless exorcisms, lit up, too. The points of light swirled around me in a perfect sphere, and brakes squealed. Tires shredded as the ’breed closed in, traffic snarling around me.

I’d landed right in the middle of the goddamn road. An ungodly screech, and the first hellbreed jagged toward me from the right, leaving the ground in a leap that violated physics and sanity all at once. It was a female, long golden hair in dreadlock snarls and her too-white teeth bared as they lengthened, her eyes full of low red hellfire dripping, riding the updraft of her rage and crackling out of existence. She wore fluttering orange silk, a loose shirt and pajama pants. Her claws were bony scythes.

Think fast, Jill. I threw myself aside, a nail of red pain in my thigh, my feet thudding onto the hood of a big red SUV oddly slewed in the road. A teenage boy in the driver’s seat gawped at me, and I leapt again, straining, the gem on my wrist feeding a burst of controlled fire through me. Blue light flashed—another spark from the ring—and I was still gawdawful fast, almost hellbreed-fast, especially when I wasn’t weighed down by weapons and a long black coat.

Though I’d like my coat now. And some ammo. And for my birthday I’d really like a pony. Ignored the thought, my foot flicked out, and I kicked the dreadlocked ’breed in the face. The impact jolted up to my hip, taking a break in my still-healing femur, and I screamed as she did, two cries of female effort.

No, three. I couldn’t worry about the third one. I dropped back down onto the SUV’s roof, and the ’breed twisted. For one eternal moment she hung in the air over me, time slowing down and I braced myself because her claws were still out and this was going to hurt when she landed. I had nothing but the gun and it was rising but the ammo wouldn’t help.

The third voice was a stream of obscenities cutting across the ’breed’s desperate howl and my own. Gunfire crackled and the dreadlocked ’breed tumbled aside, half her head evaporating in a mess of black ichor and zombie oatmeal.

What the fuck? That wasn’t me!

The newcomer uncoiled over me with a bound that was pure poetry, long leather duster flapping once like wet laundry shaken with an authoritative crack! Silver sparked and popped in her hair, beads tied to tiny braids in the straight shoulder-length mass, and her blue eyes were alight with hard joy. The ruby above and between her eyebrows was a point of living flame, and she turned in midair, firing at another hellbreed streaking out of the shadows.

Holy shit, I know her!

But I could not for the life of me come up with her name. An angry swarm of buzzing scraped the inside of my temples as I strained, frozen for a few critical moments.

The Trader who landed on the hood of a small black sports car, legs swelling with muscle and his entire body lengthening as he exploded out of the crouch and for her back probably didn’t know her name either. He’d never learn it, either, because I shot him four times in midflight, the recoil jolting up my arm controlled almost as an afterthought. The hollow points tore up his head and chest bad enough to put him down on the road with a thud.

Hopefully the bleeding out would do the rest, but if it didn’t I’d figure something else out.

Horns screeched. A rending crash, a blue minivan rear-ending another SUV down the line. Someone was screaming from the sidewalk, I hoped it wasn’t collateral damage. Fucking civilians, we’re doing this out in the middle of the road, what the fuck?

The woman landed, her right-hand gun blurring into its holster and her fingers jerking at something attached to her belt. “Status! ” she yelled, and wonder of wonders, I understood exactly what she meant.

She was asking if I could fight. I could, I’d be more than happy to, it would make me ecstatic, I just needed some goddamn ammo that would put these fuckers down.

“No ammo!” I rolled off the SUV’s roof and landed with a jolt on the road. My legs burned, bone messily healing, crackling as etheric force jerked at them to set the breaks correctly. It was the gem on my wrist doing it, and I didn’t care. Traffic was at a complete standstill. “Civilians all over! Werepanther up on the rooftop, hope he’s headed for the barrio! Fucking hellbreed chasing us! Perry! ”

“Figures.” She half-turned, eyes roving. Every piece of silver on her ran with blue sparks under the surface, and the ring on my third left finger responded with crackling of its own. “What you packing?”

“.45. One. Nothing else. Regular ammo.” Frustration turned the words into hard little bullets, but I sounded tight-mouth amused.

There was another impact. We both turned, guns coming up, and the thing in her right hand was a bullwhip, sharpsilver spines jingling at its end. She twitched it a little, assuring free play, and my fingers suddenly itched. I wanted one, too, in the worst way.

Theron rose from a crouch. “Devi.” He tipped his head. “Look who’s back.”

Her name lit up inside my head, another klieg light of memory and meaning. Devi. Anya Devi. I let out a sigh of relief. If she was here, things had just gotten exponentially better.

So why did my heart suddenly pound in my wrists and throat for a moment, before training clamped down again? Why did I feel suddenly guilty?

Her face twisted a little, smoothed out. “Barrio?”

He shrugged, eyes lambent. “Was trying.”

“Galina’s.” She glanced at me like I would protest, but I didn’t have a damn thing to say. I scanned the perimeter, kept my fool mouth shut.

Theron looked relieved and stubborn all at once. “Can’t make it. Too many of them, wait for daylight.”

I lowered my gun, did another half turn. Traffic was hell-to-breakfast higgledy-piggledy, and people were actually starting to get out of their cars to get a closer gander at the trouble. Idiot lookie-lous.

But then, they didn’t know hellbreed were on the loose. We kept it a secret, we hunters.

Monty’s going to have kittens over this. Was I in the middle of a case? Were the cops betting on when I’d show up again, was Vice running the pool on sightings of me, nervous because I’d been out of action for a little bit?

We had to vanish soon, or the crowd would get hurt. As it was, the cops were going to have trouble with this one.

The woman sighed. “Goddamn stubborn Weres. Jill? You with me?”

Do you even need to ask, Devi? But I probably would’ve asked me, too. “Yeah.”

“Are you safe?”

I looked over my shoulder, shaking aside my tangled hair. The scar down her right cheek was flushed, and she didn’t look happy. Her gaze was disconcertingly direct, and for a moment I thought I could see all the way into the back of her brain. I didn’t look away. “Safe?” I sounded honestly puzzled. I was a hunter. What was she really asking?

“Never mind. Here.” Her left hand flicked, tossing something; I plucked it out of the air.

It was an extended clip, and I caught a glint of silver from the top bullet peeking out. Silverjacket rounds, just the thing to pierce a ’breed’s tough shell and poison them, weaken them enough so you could tear them to itty-bitty pieces and make the night a fractionally safer place.

For the umpteenth time that long, long night, relief swamped me. The waves of feeling under my skin were like caffeine jolts, or like some drug that hadn’t been invented yet.

Thank you, God. My fingers flew, drawing the old clip out, clearing the chamber, racking the new clip, chambering a round. The relief turned into a calm steadiness.

Now we can do some shit. Oh yeah.

She drew her left-hand gun again. A howl rose on the exhaust-laden wind, and sirens began baying in the distance. The ruby at her forehead gave a sharp glitter, and I saw old yellow-green bruising on the side of her neck. “Stay low. You hear me, Kismet? No heroics. Stay low, follow Theron, and I’ll do the rest. And Jill?”

“Yeah?” My throat was full. The buzz inside my head crested, threatening to shake me. Her territory was over the mountains, why was she here?

I said goodbye to her once. And she promised to do…something. What? What was it?

“If you become a liability, I’ll put you down myself.” She was braced for action, I realized. As if I was the enemy.

Or as if I was a question mark.

That was new, and unwelcome. We were hunters, she and I. It’s a bond deeper than blood, and there are no lies told or implied, no quarter asked or given. Why would she even say that?

My right wrist ached, and I had a sudden, very bad feeling about all this. But the first wave of hellbreed had massed and moved out into the streetlamp glow, civilians were screaming, and Theron arrived right next to me, his hand curling around my left arm again. Devi let out a short sharp breath, and every inch of silver on her ran with blue light.

“Time to go,” Theron said, and the race was on.