Night Shift

Chapter Twenty-one

Galina's shop was shut up tighter than an oyster, the sign turned to «closed» and the blinds on the front windows drawn down. Her back door was closed and locked too, and the red-orange carapace of Sanctuary shielding wedded to the walls resounded uneasily, crackling with the charge in the air. The storm was coming in fast, breathless expectancy hanging thick under the clouds, pressing on pavement and hurrying people.

I knocked at Galina's red-painted back door for a long time, more uneasy than ever. I couldn't break in and poke around inside her house without dealing with the Sanctuary bindings, and if she wasn't answering she was either out or had retreated to her inner sanctum for some Work. The latter was most likely; Sancs don't often go abroad.

Then who the hell called me from here? And would Galina be out with a rogue Were on the streets? Not to mention the hellbreed action recently.

I thought about it, eyeing the porch roof over her back door.

A few moments later I was on the roof, and I cased it thoroughly, even sweeping behind the glass cube of the greenhouse where Galina grew all sorts of fun stuff. I mean, where else are you going to get your hellebore and mandrake, if not from your local Sane?

I don't like this. Who called me? Where's Galina?

My boots creaked, dyed dark with dried blood. My coat flapped, lifting on stray breaths of breeze as wind flirted uneasily between earth and storm-laden sky. The scar pulsed, random little soundless chuckles of wet delight spilling up my arm from its puckered tissue.

Even the emergency hatch behind an AC unit was closed and stubborn. I moved to the edge of the roof and peered down the deserted street, not liking the feeling I was getting.

A slight prickling between my shoulder blades, as if I was being watched. Was it nerves? God knew I was having a little trouble with mental balance, lately. Getting almost-killed twice in one day can do that to you.

It's not the getting killed that's worrying you, Jill. It's a Were. Specifically, a Were who's "getting possessive," in Harp's immortal phrase.

It took a physical effort to get my mental train off that track. Stay focused, Jill.

I eased along the edge of the roof to peer down at the front of the store. Stray bits of paper rustled, skipping down the pavement. I caught a breath of diesel and a powerful hit of green-gray river water, and the ozone smell of approaching lightning. The street was deserted, lamps flickering into life in the gathering artificial twilight.

A glass and iron box a block up caught my eye, and my skin roughened instinctively. I felt cold all over, my breath shortening and my nipples peaking under my T-shirt, hard as chips of rock. Phone booth. Galina's got her number stenciled on her front window, and my pager's not exactly a secret I'm a goddamn idiot.

The cloak of red-orange energy over the building shivered restively, like a horse.

I froze.

The click of a hammer cocking sounded very loud behind me.

"Don't move," Navoshtay Siv Cenci said, in a pleasant, light tone. "Keep facing the street, hunter."

I've been shot before, hellbreed. But I stayed where I was, my back alive with gooseflesh and the knowledge that a 'breed who had nearly eviscerated me and made mincemeat out of Harp was behind me, with a gun. The click sounded like a large-caliber model. Or maybe that was just my nerves again.

Behind me. She had to have come up from the porch roof. Had she been watching from down the street? How had she gotten my pager number? It wasn't a secret, but still—

Galina had better be inside her sanctum. If you've touched her I will kill you. Rage worked its way up inside me. Subsided with an effort that left me shaking, struggling to think clearly through the adrenaline haze. It wasn't logical—even a hellbreed couldn't harm a Sane inside her own House. Galina was too smart to go outside, wasn't she?

Wasn't she?

I waited. Patience, milaya. It is soft and quiet that catches mouse.

Only this mouse had the drop on me, and a gun to boot.

"You've killed to find me. To flush me out of safety." Cenci's voice was calm and pleasant, with only the tinkling wrongness of it to tell me hellbreed. I could sense it now, the contamination in the air around her. Silver shifted in my hair, heating up, blue light running under its surface. Thunder roiled faroff, coming closer.

"The Were's being chased," I said to the street. "He'll be killed mercifully. You, however, are a whole different ball of wax." Two children. And Jimmy Cheung, you bitch. Cleaning up? What kind of game are you playing?

The silence behind me took on a predatory cast, the pause of a shark in the moment just after blood hits the water and right before frenzy. Galina's building thrummed underneath me, quivering with unease. Slowly waking up, catching the current of bloodlust passing between my unprotected back and the hellbreed behind me.

"I should kill you," Navoshtay Siv Cenci whispered. "We don't want trouble. I just wanted to be left alone to do what I have to do. Is that so much to ask?"

Left alone? "When your father's Navoshtay Niv Arkady? Alone doesn't happen, sweetcheeks. You're 'breed. You know that."

"So you're going to do his dirty work." Did her voice actually break? Amazing. I gathered myself. My right hand curled loosely around the whip-handle.

Keep talking, bitch. I'm a few seconds away from changing your whole religion for good. "I don't do dirty work. I avenge my people. Like the rookie cop you put in the hospital." He'll never be right again, even with therapy and the best of care. You ruined a life, and you did it so easily. I eased my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, a millimeter at a time.

"They shot at him." She dismissed it, I could almost envision her shrugging. "I was quick, I was merciful as I could be. But you, you're doing my father's dirty work." Yes, a definite break in her sweet, corrupt voice. Did she use it to hook her prey, like Arkady used his black, black eyes?

I rose fully to my feet, the flesh on my back crawling with the knowledge that a bullet might be coming any moment. If she was aiming for my head, this might all be over very quickly. I would find out if hunters really went to Hell when they finally got unlucky. "I'm doing what I should, to protect the citizens of my city. I'm a hunter, hellspawn. It's what I do."

Another thought slid through my head. She's not shooting me. Why? She's not acting like a hellbreed.

Fat sizzling drops began to patter down dispiritedly. They made stinging quarter-size dollops on the dusty, hot rooftop. Sweat pricked under my arms and at the small of my back, dried blood crackling as my clothes moved on the breeze. My fingers shifted slightly, ever so slightly, on the whip handle.

"I told you not to move." Cool, now. She'd made up her mind what she was going to do. Maybe I'd been premature in thinking she wasn't acting like a hellspawn. Maybe she was just playing with me, cat with mouse.

In other words, bad luck for you, Jill. But if you're a mouse, you're a mouse with claws. I polished my very best fuck you tone and flung it at her. "What are you going to do? If you shoot me, other hunters will take my place. Your daddy's in town, and he's pissed off because you stole his Were toy. There's a major incident shaping up over him even having a Were toy—"

"He isn't my father's!" she screamed. "He's mine."

I spun, diving, the whip flashing free and my left-hand gun clearing leather. The whip's ribbon curled through the air, screaming, and struck across her face as she hung in midair, claws outstretched, her own gun falling unheeded to the rooftop as mine spoke. Time turned to gelatin, closing around me as I moved. Black hellbreed ichor flew in a flattening arc before she smashed into me, catching me in midair and throwing us both over the edge.

Wind whistled, and we hung in freefall, the silver in my hair spitting and crackling. She struck me across the cheekbone, a good punch if she'd had all or even some of her weight behind it, a hot gush of pain as her claws buried themselves in my chest, tangling in my ribs before she could jerk her wrist down and spill my guts. Back arching, scream bursting through my blood-slick lips, we fell in a thrashing tangle of tortured air and a sudden booming as the protections on Galina's house woke in a sheet of blinding crimson and orange flame.

She sure doesn't act like a pregnant woman. Maybe it's hormones. The thought was tinged with deep screaming hilarity over a well of panic that training shoved aside.

Cenci thrashed, but I had one hand fisted in her long platinum hair and I brought the gun up, pistol-whipping her across the face.

Falling and Fighting 101: brace someone's head when you're bouncing a gun off them. It hurts more.

More black ichor flew, spattering my skin in stinging drops. I got in another two shots on the way down before we hit pavement, a snapping in the structures of my skeleton—again—and her claws were torn free, a hot gush of blood following them. No wonder I need steak. Another flash of a thought, there and gone in a moment that paradoxically seemed to last forever. I'm losing iron left and right.

Cenci rolled free, dazed and shaking her head. The smell of scorching rose, and Galina's protections flamed again, dilating like a camera shutter. A scream of toasted air boiled away from the shop, the plate-glass window in front bowing and making a wobbling noise.

The sky opened its floodgates on us both.

I rolled, get away get away, shaking my right arm out as the scar boiled with acid, desire-laced pain and shot a jolt of power up my arm, sinking into veins and jacking through my system like a needle-load of something deadly. A sharp clarity bolted through me, I made it to my knees with both guns out, the whip slithering along the pavement with its metal bits tinkling as it landed, dropped like a bad habit.

My first two bullets caught her, but she collided with me again. There was no technique, it was sheer blind rage and overwhelming strength—which is a hellbreed's downfall.

They get so used to bullying humans around, they don't use their strength effectively. Hunters are trained to never stop thinking about how to most efficiently fuck up the nightsider giving us trouble right now.

Reflex had loosened my knees and let go of my right-hand gun. I socked my hip into her midriff, bootsoles squealing on pavement and a long trail of sparks hanging in midair behind her, and I didn't need to do much, just grab a fistful of her and shove to deflect a critical millimeter or two, her blind rush providing all the impetus necessary to throw her directly into Galina's plate-glass window.

BOOM.

A wall of concussive force slammed outward, tossing me like a rag doll across the street and into the brick facing opposite. Heat bloomed, and superheated air broke the sound barrier, thunder rolling down the street. I slid down to the pavement, coughing and retching, and heard stumbling footsteps as the hellbreed fled.

Galina's defenses settled, rumbling through the pavement like a subway. Sanctuary rule numero uno: do not throw yourself at the Sanctuary's walls. The protections respond without any conscious effort, and the response is… energetic, to say the least.

Other footsteps, softer ones, approaching me at what seemed a very slow rate next to the rapid pitter-patter of little hellbreed feet. Noise returned through the white buzzing of my dazed ears. Rain pounded my skin.

"— ogodjillareyou—"

I am getting really tired of being flung around. I shook my head. Warm trickles of blood slid down my neck from my ears, dripped from my nose. I blinked more warm wetness out of my eyes. The pain came then, a great rolling breaker of it as my body coped with the damage.

I'm racking up one hell of a bill with Perry. Then, a small, noiseless thought: I wish Saul was here. I'd like to see him.

When had I started being happy to see a disdainful country-boy Were? When he'd kissed me? Or when he'd stayed to make sure I was still breathing after tangling with a rogue?

You've got bigger problems, Jill. Get up and start fighting. It's what you know how to do. So do it.

I blinked and looked up. Galina's hot mortal fingers pressed against my clammy forehead. "Get up!" she screamed, and thunder rattled. Coruscating energy sparkled in the air around her—she was actually dividing her Sanctuary spell, protecting me as ripples of power boomed and echoed, potential-paths opening as lightning blurred down, the sound like cannonades. Smoke boiled up, and the rain began to slash down in earnest.

I made it to my feet. Leaned on Galina as she half-dragged my heavy self—muscle-dense, hellbreed-strong, weighed down with leather and metal and ammo—across the street under lashing rain slicking down her hair and mine. She smacked the door to her shop open, and the bell tinkled merrily as she dragged me into safety. I collapsed on the floor near her glassed-in counter, next to a bookcase and a rack of candles. My body curled into a ball, and I decided on the spot to spend the next few hours shaking and drinking some of her spiced rum.

Alas, such was not meant to be. Because as soon as I shut my eyes and sagged against the floor, really wanting to shut the world out for a while, the bell tinkled again, and a soundless step filled the shop. The protections thrummed, a high mounting note of energy just aching to be unleashed.

Galina spoke with the sonorousness of church bells chorusing morning in some ancient, smoke-decked city.

"Take one more step toward her, Pericles, and you will be thrown back to Hell screaming." She paused, the heavy static-breathlessness of power not abating one iota. "And while you're at it, close the door."

Perry wrapped his long pale fingers around the steaming mug. It was peppermint tea, the vapor rising from it assuming angular screaming shapes before dissipating. Galina swabbed at the blood on my cheek while rain smashed against the skylight overhead. Her marcel waves were tousled and she moved with quick, sharp birdlike movements, her necklace glinting at odd moments as the protections fluctuated.

I took another jolt of rum. The scar on my wrist throbbed. Perry's blue eyes lingered on my throat, and I was suddenly very glad Galina had made him sit at the other end of her long scrubbed-pine kitchen table.

"The Weres lost him, you know." His words were underscored with a booming rattle of thunder, and every once in a while a small mouselike tremor would run under the surface of his skin, flickering and gone in a heartbeat as whatever shape lurked under his semblance of bland, almost-handsome male humanity responded to the raw energy in the air. Still, even Perry didn't dare make trouble in a Sanctuary, and he sat very still where Galina told him to. "He slipped their hunt. Rogues sometimes do, I'm told."

Not often, Perry. As a matter of fact, hardly ever. Just one more thing about this case that isn't what it should be. I set the bottle down on the table with a click. The scar flushed, a knot of poisoned delight. I wished I'd tucked a spare copper cuff in my coat along with everything else, instead of leaving them at home. "I'm getting blood on your floor." I sounded mournful. "I'm sorry, Galina."

"No problem. I'm just glad I came out in time to see what was happening." She grinned, her slanted eyes dancing with merriment for a moment before she sobered, glancing back at Perry.

Who sipped his tea, quietly. And sat still.

Hallelujah and pass the ammunition, there's a single place where Perry won't fuck with me.

The only trouble was, I couldn't stay here. I had too much to do.

Galina's eyes caught mine. Her fingers were gentle as she sponged more blood from my face. Silver buzzed in my hair like a rattlesnake's tail, responding to the humming tension of the storm overhead and the echoes of the Sanctuary protections' lunge into wakefulness, reverberating in the ether.

I took another jolt of rum. "I'm fine, sweets. Thanks." I had no idea you could divide your Sanc protections. Stilly that's not the question I'd like answered most right now. Right now I want to know who called me, and where Cenci was hiding. I should have felt her in the neighborhood, especially after driving her off Harp. I should have fucking smelled her.

Which meant either she could cloak herself from me more effectively than any other hellbreed, or she hadn't been waiting for me in the neighborhood.

Galina made a small derisive sound. "Your pupils are all over the place, Jill. I think you have a concussion." She wrung out the washcloth, water dyed thin crimson squeezing through her fingers. "What were you doing on my roof?" The question was casual, but her shoulders were a little too tight.

I don't even know what I was doing on your roof. "Someone—I'm betting it was this hellbreed Cenci—buzzed me. Maybe it was to lure me away from Harp and Dom, get me where she could at least put me out of commission for a while. Probably so she could get back and move her Were buddy." The spell in the cellar was laid to protect and conceal him, neatest trick of the week. This just keeps getting more tangled the deeper I dig. My eyes flickered across the table to Perry's, interested and bright over the rim of his cup. "Any light you can shed on this, Perry?"

He set the mug down, a slight smile playing over the corners of his lips. His linen suit was, of course, pristine and unwrinkled, though he must have been outside in the downpour. "I've interceded with Arkady for you. As long as we keep you out of his way, I think we can avoid further unpleasantness."

A flickering tremor slid through his face, as if something had shifted just under the skin. His grin widened a trifle as he adjusted his cuffs, his forgettable face turning sharp and predatory for a single moment.

Which doesn't explain what you're doing here. My skin chilled. Galina's mouth drew down sourly. She carried the bowl over to the sink, glanced at the water washing the window outside, and dumped the bloody mess down the drain. Her silence was full of the kind of loathing most people associate with pale wriggling things in spoiled meat.

"Very kind of you." I picked up the bottle, took another swig. Then, because not to do it would be weak, I met his eyes again. The scar turned to an agonized infected burning burrowing into bone, a reminder that he could tweak it into pain or pleasure as his mood called for.

"A pleasure." The smile widened, white teeth exposed. Electric light shone mellow in his sandy-pale hair; a flash of lightning outside bleached everything briefly. "Especially when done for my Kiss."

Do not call me that, Perry. I hate that. Again, I didn't say it. "Why did he come all the way from New York to fetch his daughter instead of sending you a request to have her sent back? You are, after all, the ranking hellbreed in the city."

His eyes hooded. "Especially since you recently thinned our ranks so drastically. You're gaining quite a reputation for impulsiveness." The sibilants slid over the scar, each sending a thread of soft poisoned delight into my flesh. The old carrot-and-stick approach.

I wondered which he thought worked better, the reward or the punishment.

"You're not answering my question." That gives me wriggle room on our bargain. Cautious relief warred with fresh unease.

A single shrug, infinitely evocative of nothing, pulled up his shoulders. His eyes flicked away, roving the surfaces of the kitchen, leaving a thin vibration of slime on everything they touched. "Other families and their dirty laundry hold no interest for me. He is here, he wants his earthborn progeny, under our laws she belongs to him." Perry's gaze flicked back to me, and the faint smile he had settled into now seemed a grimace of distaste.

"Earthborn progeny" means Navoshtay impregnated a Trader. A shiver of loathing went up my back, jingling the silver in my hair. It still didn't answer why Navoshtay was here to collect her personally. By what I knew of hellbreed customs, Cenci was born out of a human and therefore not pure 'breed. She had the same «legal» rights as a chair or a coffee mug and theoretically not as much power as a pure 'breed; it should have been a simple case of Perry cooperating with me to send her back trussed up like a pig on a spit, with an apple in her mouth—if it was necessary to send her back alive, that is. If he could control the unruly hellbreed of Santa Luz and the surrounding metro areas, he could apply enough pressure to find one troublemaking 'breed female and kick her ass over the river.

Then again, she was powerful. Disturbingly powerful. Navoshtay's spawn in a body that might be old enough to burn out some of its mortality… the thought was nightmare-worthy, and that's saying something. Besides, I'd never seen Perry unveil the extent of his power, not even when he marked me.

Sometimes I let myself think he might just be tricky instead of strong.

Perry paused for a moment, then went on, silkily. "She is making quite some trouble with the human law—of which you are still a part—and you have made it adequately clear that the trouble will not stop if she remains in my territory. There is no profit to keeping her here and angering Arkady. For all these reasons, I could care less why he wants her. My interest is that this matter be concluded quickly, so it doesn't interfere with my own pleasures more than it has already."

It was a nice pat explanation. Too bad I didn't buy it. It was not like Perry to merely obey another hellbreed, no matter how powerful. Hellbreed don't do obedience and they don't do charity. Their net of feudal obligation runs on one thing: fear. There's no trust among 'breed. They turn on each other at a moment's notice, whenever they think the benefit outweighs the risk.

Thank God it does, too. Otherwise they might rule the world, instead of just hanging in the dark corners and buying power and privilege.

"Well, thanks for telling me. I'll call you if I need you." I lifted the rum bottle again, touched it to my lips.

Perry's eyes fastened hungrily on the bottle's mouth, and by default on mine. "Are you dismissing me, my dearest?" One pale eyebrow raised.

Oh, goddammit, I am so not in the mood for this. "Why are you here?"

Perry slid off his seat. He looked about to say something, but Galina turned from the sink and regarded him, level and easy, her mouth a straight line.

"Don't make me, hellspawn." Her tone was just as even as her mouth.

He ignored her, but he didn't move forward. "I came to tell you the Weres lost their rogue. I also came to tell you Arkady will not pursue you. As long as you stay out of his sight, he will… forgive… your impoliteness."

"And you just happened to be in the neighborhood when I came by?" I tossed it at him as if it didn't matter. Who did call me down here, Perry? If it was Cenci, why didn't she shoot me? And if it was you … that would mean that you knew she was in this area. My brain pawed lightly at the problem, turned it over, and dropped it in disgust. I was too tired, blunted both by adrenaline fatigue and the shock of almost-dying so many times in a row. I needed some rest before I could even begin untangling this out.

"I can always find you, my dear." The grin widened again, white teeth showing their sharp pearly edges. I thought of shark's teeth when I saw him smile like that. "Think on that, for a while. See you soon." A nod to Galina, his sandy hair falling over his forehead in a soft wave—and he was gone, the Sanctuary shields settling back into taut humming alertness as the bell on the shop door downstairs tinkled.

I let out a sigh and put my forehead down on the smooth wood of the table. It felt good, cool against fevered flesh. Great. Just… great. Dried blood crackled on my skin, but my hair was still wet from rain.

"Every time I talk to him I feel slimy." She shuddered, a movement I could sense without looking. The shields shivered too, responding. "I don't know how you stand it."

I don't. Not very well, at least. I'm so scared he's going to get in, Galina. The more he plays with my head, the better he gets at taking me apart.

The better he got at that, the more dangerous it was for me and everyone I protected. "I don't stand for much. Thanks for bringing me in." I closed my eyes, tried to relax my shoulders. They wouldn't go down, tight and taut and aching.

The faucet started to gurgle. Was she refilling the bowl? She wouldn't be able to dab much more blood off me with just the one washcloth. "I had to," she said quietly. "We can't afford to lose you."

I took refuge in bleak humor. "I'd hate to be lost." Thunder boomed again, the storm slacking despite the massive disturbance of the roused Sanctuary shields that had contributed to the instability of the weather pattern. You can always tell when a Sane gets pissed off, it gets rainy over their little castles.

"Seriously, Jill. Perry was just up the street, I sensed him as soon as I hit my doorstep. He was standing around, waiting."

I lifted my head, bracing my chin on both hands and slumping in the chair. She shut the water off, brought the bowl to the table, and dipped the washcloth in again.

"Up the street?" I turned this over in my head and got exactly nowhere with it, again. He was waiting. If he knew Cenci was waiting here too…

What the fuck is going on?

"I wonder if he was going to ride in to save you." Her touch was gentle as she sponged at the crusted blood along my hairline. "Or if he lured you down here in the first place."

Me too. My face wrinkled up, hard. I tasted blood and the sourness of failure. "Thank you. I was trying not to think that out loud."

"Just one more service I provide. You want something to eat?"

"More rum, if you've got it." I finally succeeded in pushing my shoulders down a little, unstringing the nervous tension in them. "Then I've got to go home. I'm calling it a day."