Heaven's Spite

20

The envelope, heavy cream-colored linen paper, stank of hellbreed. The sweet candy sickness mixed with rotting ichor, cinnamon rolls, and breakfast smells, as well as the spice and healthy fur tang of Weres. There were no obvious traps or tingles of sorcery on it.

Someone had spent some effort to get it delivered right to my door. Whoever it was had evaded the watch the Weres had set, and they all looked grave about that. It didn’t stop them from queuing up for breakfast, though. I sank down on the couch—an old orange Naugahyde monster Saul had slipcovered. It was about the first thing he’d done when he moved in. Other than throwing out all my kitchen gear and starting afresh. It was a good thing I had municipal funding; he’d about wiped me out when it came to pots and pans.

Stop stalling, Jill.

Anya stood at the end of the coffee table, watching me. Like she expected me to go bugshit again at any moment. She had her absinthe bottle out and took a swig as she stared at me.

I tore the envelope open. Two photographs and an 8½-by-11 sheet of the same expensive linen paper. The writing was copperplate script, the ink rusty and watery, scratched on with what I’d bet was an iron nib.

The first picture. Black-and-white, glossy, high quality. I stared at it for a few moments, my pulse pounding in my ears. Handed it to Anya.

It was Saul, whole and unharmed, lying on the floor of an iron cage. Taken between bars, it focused on his profile. His eyes were open, but he had curled up, one arm under his head. Grace in every line of his long, lean body, his boots and fringed jacket gone but the rest of his clothing there. He looked a little disarranged, and the paint on his cheeks was drying and flaking off. The cage was square, and as far as I could tell there was no Chaldean scoring on the bars.

They would have other ways of keeping a Were quiescent. He was obviously not dead.

Anything could happen, though.

The second picture was taken with a telephoto lens. A slight figure, hunching his shoulders as he went through Galina’s front door. A nose that could have come from an Aztec codex, pitted cheeks, and his lank hair.

Gilberto.

I handed that photograph over, too. It quivered a little bit in my fingers.

The note was short and to the point.Via Dolorosa, at dawn tomorrow. Come to the middle of the bridge and wait.

It was signed with a twisted little sketch—a glyph that looked like a crying mouth behind clawed fingers. That was the closest the little bastards could get to writing Helletöng down. It was a name-mark, and a huge break. I could get it to Hutch and find out who was working to bring this Julius, or whoever, through. That was just one short step to serving justice on him, her, or it.

Justice? No. Vengeance. Screaming, bone-breaking, blood-spattering vengeance.

Via Dolorosa had to be Wailer Memorial Bridge, lifting up from downtown and flying over the river, leading to the highway that ran under the bluffs. There wasn’t much room for anything but freight yards and a sad shantytown or two. Every morning you could see some of the homeless trudging across the bridge toward the better pickings of the city’s beating heart.

I handed the letter to Anya. It fluttered like a bird in my unsteady fingers. And I wondered just where Rutger and that goddamn ’breed in black pajamas were. I hadn’t seen their bodies, so they were possibly still alive.

And “possibly” will bite you on the ass at every opportunity, when you’re dealing with hellbreed.

“It’s a trap,” she said immediately. “Probably set by that son of a bitch in there or one of his vassals. There’s no cover on that bridge. Bet you anything it’s being watched now, too.”

“Yes.” I nodded. Silver chimed. I took my hand away from a gun butt when she gave me a meaningful stare. “Exactly.”

“You’re not going to do it.” Flat and final.

I couldn’t lie, so I just stared at the paper. Her hands were steady. There was a scrape on her right knuckles, thin threads of healing sorcery sunk into the skin and binding everything together. If I didn’t have the scar, I’d be a mass of healing sorcery by this point too. I probably wouldn’t have tried banefire in that cage, either.

There were so many things I couldn’t have survived or done without the mark of Perry’s lips on my wrist. I’d never caught the smell of sicksweet corruption on Mikhail… but then, after Perry had given me the mark and my enhanced senses, had Mikhail’s mark vanished?

No, because Belisa had seen it. Or was that another lie? Did the scar remain even if the bargain was cleared?

I shuddered at the thought.

Anya dropped the letter on the coffee table. It fell as if it was heavier than it had any right to be. Leather creaked as she folded her arms, the cape of her duster moving as her shoulders came up. “Jill. You’re not going to do it. Not without me.”

I searched for a reasonable answer. Finally found one. “You have to shut down those other evocation sites. The Weres can’t do it; it takes a hunter. There might be other mass graves lying around, too.”

“How are we going to—” She caught on. “No. No way. Jill, for Christ’s sake. You go in there like this, he’ll eat you alive.”

She had a point. “He hasn’t yet.” I clasped my hands, my apprentice-ring glinting sharply. I remembered Mikhail fitting it on my third left finger, a small strange smile on his aquiline face. There, little snake. Honest silver, on vein to heart. You are apprentice. Now it begins. And his eyes, bluer and paler than Anya’s, cool and considering. Weighing me. “What else didn’t Mikhail tell me?”

She spread her hands. “I don’t know.”

The smell of food was drowning out everything else, and I didn’t know whether to be happy or revolted about that. It was just masking the hellbreed stink now. Just putting a pretty face on it.

I sank back into the couch. Stared at the ceiling. The skylights were full of thin hot winter gold now. I’d lost a lot of time knocked out in that warehouse, behind bars running with Chaldean runes. It was small comfort that Rutger or Belisa hadn’t pulled off whatever they were attempting. The more fools they, leaving me in there with my weapons…

… but could I take anything about the whole episode for granted? I couldn’t.

Whatever was going on, Perry was playing for keeps. There might be others working at cross-purposes; God knows hellbreed don’t cooperate. It had all the makings of a clusterfuck in progress, and not much in the way of stopping it unless I put on my big-girl panties and started getting some shit done.

When I brought my chin back down, I found Anya watching me. There was also a plate of breakfast—eggs, pancakes, hash browns, and cut-up cantaloupe that Saul had been planning on using for a fruit salad as soon as he could get by the farmer’s market—held at eye level by a somber Theron. He wore a Trixies T-shirt, jeans, and the expression of an unhappy but determined Were.

My heart wrung down on itself.

“Gilberto.” My lips were numb. “They might grab him outside Galina’s.”

“We’ve already sent more Weres.” Theron’s mouth was set in a thin line.

“Hellbreed—” I began.

“Shut up.” He shoved the plate in my face again. “And eat. No, we don’t go up against hellbreed. We can buy him some time to get to Sanctuary, maybe. Make it harder for them to steal him away. But you need to eat.”

I grabbed the plate, because otherwise he would have pushed it right up my nose. “Theron, goddammit—”

“You’re about to do that Lone Ranger shit, Jill. It never ends well.” He gave me a level, dark glare, then turned on his heel and stalked away.

Jesus. Taken down a peg by a Were. And not a word about Saul. Of course, it would be tactless to say anything about it, wouldn’t it? They were the soul of tact.

And if he was dead, they wouldn’t speak his name. They have some funny ideas about that. Ancestor-worshipping people usually do.

I set the plate down on the coffee table. A young bird Were, brown feathers tied fluttering in his sleek dark bowl cut, handed another plate to Anya, holding a fork against the side with his thumb. They were going to have to break out the paper plates and picnic cutlery in a bit; I didn’t have nearly enough china for the crowd in here.

“He’s right. You get stupid now, we’ll lose a hunter. And quite possibly more Weres.” Anya crouched, setting down her absinthe bottle. She started shoveling in the food as if it was oatmeal, neatly and ferociously. She hunched a little, too, the way you do in juvie or prison.

Just like Gil. It had taken me forever to learn to eat like a civilian. I’d done it for Saul, mostly. He was big on manners.

I stood up. Anya tensed, her fork in midair. “What the hell do you think—”

“I am going to take those two somewhere else.” Brittle calm enveloped me. “You round up the Weres and get out of here. I want you to kill every evocation site you can find and liaise with Montaigne in case there are more bodies. I’ll question Perry and leave any information I get with Hutch.”

She shook her head, vigorously. “Bad idea. Bad idea.”

“They’ll come for me, here or wherever I am, before dawn tomorrow. Meeting on the bridge is just a ploy. There’s another game being played here, and I want to find out what it is before it gets any deeper or another hellbreed comes through to wipe my city off the map.” My fingers ran lightly over weapons—guns, knives, my bullwhip, my full pockets, everything stowed away. “They won’t give me a whole day to get my feet under me and make plans. I don’t want the Weres catching any more flak. And Perry will answer every one of my questions.” Every single one. God help us both. But especially me.

She didn’t think much of that idea, either. “You can’t trust him not to—”

“Anya. I’ve been playing Perry for years now. Since before Mikhail… left.” Died, Jill. Call it what it is. That Sorrows bitch that cut his throat is in there, and you haven’t killed her yet. Do you know what you’re doing? I told that little worried voice to take a hike. Checked my ammo again, the equivalent of a nervous tic for a hunter. “I haven’t done too badly.”

Meaning: I’m not damned yet.

“If you didn’t even know that he—” She shut up when I stepped away, leaving the plate on the coffee table. Saul had thrown away the ruins of the box and its silver bow, too, probably with fistfuls of salt. He knew what precautions to take, now.

Too bad it hadn’t saved him.

Had they meant to kidnap him here? Should I have asked him to go straight to Galina’s? Were they tracking him even as he left the cemetery?

I brought myself back to the present with a jerk. My aura wasn’t crackling anymore, and that was good. The Talisman was a sleeping weight on my chest, heavy and warm. Like a consoling hand. “No matter what I knew, or know, or should have known, Mikhail’s dead and my city’s in danger. My best bet is getting that fucking hellbreed to a place where I can deal with him. With you and the Weres getting those evocation sites shut down, I have a chance of getting Saul out of this alive and my city another few days of rolling along. Do it, Anya.”

“Jill? Jill! You’re not going to—”

I walked away.