Night Shift

Chapter Twenty-seven

The next wave of stormy weather had begun to move across the city by the time I reached Galina's. I didn't go through the shop. Instead, I leapt across a narrow gap between the Italian restaurant next door and the rooftop of her building.

Galina's greenhouse glowed with failing light as I cast my glance over the roof again. Concrete was gritty and oily underneath my boots, their leather still dark with my own blood. The stain in the closet next to my practice room had gotten deeper, wine-dark inside the double circle.

How long are you going to keep bleeding, Jill?

Another useless question.

I lifted up the latch and ducked into the greenhouse. The cloak of Sanctuary shields had no reason to stop me, which told me Galina was out of her sanctum and in the house somewhere.

Probably sensing me overhead.

Most certainly waiting. The entire world was breathless with waiting. The pattern, seen with striking clarity in the buffeting nonspace of between, had its own momentum now. All that remained was for me to do what came next.

And not get my stupid self killed. That was going to be the hard part.

The sunsword lay on a slim table scattered with gardening tools under a shelf of blue frilly orchids. Dozing, drowsy heat encircled me, the scar on my wrist pulsing under its carapace of copper, clipped on just this morning. I smelled decaying organic matter in the potting soil, the healthy powerful scent of green things growing, the sharp pungency of just-watered earth. I closed my hand around the hilt.

The Sanctuary shields shivered, tensing. My skin chilled.

"I'm not going to do anything," I said without turning around. "I just want to talk to her."

"I don't know if that's a good idea." Galina spoke from the trapdoor leading down to her bedroom. She never did like to be far from her plants. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you, Jill. It's the nature of the Sanctuary vow."

You keep my secrets just as thoroughly, I suppose I can't blame you. I nodded, deciding to piece it together. "Understood. She came here with him, didn't she? They were desperate, looking only for a way out by now, since they couldn't run anywhere else; Arkady was too close. Ironwater suggested a Sanctuary, probably as his last hope."

"I'm always a last resort, Jill. Just like you. I couldn't help him. He had some periods of lucidity, but…"

Heaviness tinted her voice. "She's here now, asking for a weapon to kill you with—one I won't give her, by the way. He's gone, broke all her protections and fled. The Weres are hunting him now?"

So he ran away even from her, at last. He must want to die. There would be no torture more thorough for a hellbreed-broken Were with intermittent periods of sanity than to know that he had broken a whole clutch of their oldest taboos and tasted human flesh. "You know they are. This time they'll catch him, because she won't be there to mask his trail and slip him free." I slid the sunsword into the soft leather sheath through the side snaps. The clicking of the snaps was very loud in the stillness. The walls hummed their song of Sanctuary. "I wouldn't have put the pieces together, except I went between this morning. I saw what she's hiding from, and I know she wouldn't shelter with any hellbreed. That's why I couldn't flush her out by burning hellbreed holes. She moved him around as much as she dared, and she hid the last place anyone would suspect—with a Sanctuary. A human."

It's official. Perry called me here to flush her out of hiding, but didn't pursue her. Why? What's his game?

Even with all I now knew, that part was still murky. It was enough of a wild card to give anyone cold sweats.

"I took my vows." Her voice didn't tremble. "And I'll keep her here to give you a head start. I don't want any more fights on my roof, and you're my friend as well as our hunter, Jill. This city can't stand to lose you."

Mighty nice of you, Galina. "I just want to talk. That's all."

I sensed the sad slow shake of her head. "I said that's not a good idea. You'd better get out of here. Once the Weres catch him there will be hell to pay."

A chill touched the base of my spine. "There's going to be hell to pay all right." I picked up the sword, buckled the diagonal strap so it rode my back, a heavy comforting weight. "But she's not going to be dealing it out. I am." The glass walls rattled a little, responding both to my voice and the cycling-up of the Sanctuary shields.

Did Galina think I was going to turn on her?

A hunter is supposed to be unpredictable. Still, a Sanctuary should have no doubts about my trustworthiness. But Galina knew I'd been too late to save Mikhail—and maybe she suspected why.

You can't lie to yourself as a hunter. But I still couldn't decide if I had been too late because of some lingering traces of trust and respect for Mikhail keeping me too far back when I followed him that night, or if I had hung back because some part of me knew something was going to happen—and wanted to punish him for betraying me, not as a teacher or as a father, but as a lover.

Did it matter? I had been too late, in any case, and Mikhail had bled out, choking on his own blood. Melisande Belisa, the Sorrows bitch, had stolen his most precious amulet, the one that should have gone to me, and fled into the night.

And now here I was.

"You should go," Galina repeated softly. Conciliatory, but with a core of steel.

For fuck's sake. Can't you see I'm trying to finish this and stop all the killing? "Tell her this, Galina. I've got a meet with Perry and Arkady tonight at the Monde. Arkady started this whole mess. He's liable, but I can't take him on without help and Perry's about as useful as tits on a boar hog in this situation. He'll be too busy trying to figure angles for himself. Billy Ironwater's death will be clean and merciful. If she goes with me up against Arkady, I promise her revenge on her father—and a clean death, as painless as I can make it." My voice caught. I turned, and saw Galina standing at the edge of the trapdoor, her green tilted eyes alight with sorrow and raw power. An ageless look, and one I almost felt sure my own face was wearing.

Galina was in full Sanctuary robes, gray silk with the wide hood thrown back, the undersleeves of crimson glowing eerily. Her necklace—quartered circle, serpent shifting—glittered with hard darts of light. "I'll pass it along. Now get out." She held a gun, her slim fingers loose as it dangled by her side. Was it for me, or for the hellbreed brooding below? I almost imagined I could feel Cenci's breathing in the hot stillness.

Waiting, like a pale blind adder under a rock. Were we both snakes hiding under the same stone?

No. I'm not hellbreed. I backed toward the door, feeling my way with each footstep. "No hard feelings, Galina." She was, after all, a Sanctuary. She had no choice.

Just like I had no choice.

"None on my end either, Jill. I'll hold her until you're gone. Be safe out there."

I finally said it. "You know I can't. It's not in my goddamn job description." I eased out of the door, closing it behind me with a click. The sunsword vibrated on my back. My boots ground the rooftop as I took a running leap and launched myself out into space, landing on the street below and pulling etheric energy through the scar, streaking away.

Clouds covered the city under a yellow-green dome, heat held close and breathless under glass. Out in the desert there would be heat lightning, and animals scuttling to shelter. Here in the valley, in my city, there was scurrying to get under cover too. Even the humans could feel something lurking in the heat and the boiling sky.

Something with teeth, just looking to close on the unwary. No wonder they sought cover.

My pager went off four times. Harp, trying to track me down. I didn't respond. The game was set and the pieces were moving, and there was nothing to do now but see how it finished out. I had my own moves to make.

I sat for a long time in my usual back pew at Mary of the Immaculate Conception, watching candleflames shudder as uneven currents of storm-charged air brushed them. If Perry was watching me, I'd drawn him away from Galina's house to here, where I usually came before I braved the Monde to make my monthly payments. My eyes drifted across the crucifix, Christ hanging with his attenuated limbs and peaceful face. A quiet, aesthetic representation of a death gruesomely paraded in front of the faithful for centuries—I wondered why they hadn't chosen the Last Supper instead. Religion might be a little more civilized if a picture of a feast instead of a Roman torture was pasted up in the churches.

Still, I know better. Humanity doesn't go in for gentle gods. I wished Mikhail was alive; I would have wanted to hear what he would say about my forays into philosophy. Probably something practical, like how all the philosophy in the world wouldn't stop a bullet.

Oh, Mikhail. I loved you. I love you so much.

Did I kill you? Even now I didn't know.

It all boiled down to simple starkness. There was light and there was darkness; and there were those in the light who fought the dark. It made us worse, sometimes, than the darkness itself. We were so close to that edge. It was impossible not to step over sometimes, whether from momentum or choice.

Did that mean we should stop fighting? What decent person could, even if the job itself wasn't decent at all?

You know better than to think that, milaya. It was Mikhail's voice, a baritone purr. I do not force you. You force yourself.

"Bullshit," I whispered. But he was right. He had lifted me out of the snow, a battered and broken girl still clawing and fighting back with her last vestiges of strength. He'd fed me, and sheltered me, and would have turned me over to social services for therapy and reclamation; indeed, had tried to several times. I'd chosen to stay with him, stubbornly sleeping on his floor and following behind him as he did his daily practice until he took me on. There was no obligation laid on me. There never is, on hunters. We can give it up and walk away at any moment. Nobody, not even the Church, blamed us if we did.

Sure you can walk away. Now that you know what's out there in the night preying on the weak, you can turn tail and head for the hills. You can move to another city and take up tatting lace for fun and dealing blackjack for profit.

Sure you can.

He had saved me because I'd let him. Because I didn't want to die in the snow. I wanted to live.

Had I killed him for it? Had I been deliberately late?

I sat very still, my hands white-knuckled on the back of the pew in front of me. Raised my eyes once again to the crucifix, silver tinkling in my hair from the slight movement. The scar gave out a throbbing murmur of dissatisfaction edging on pain.

My eyes traveled up the long nerveless legs, past the loincloth and the tortured chest, paused at the throat, and watched the slice of dreaming face I could see under the heavy tangle of thorns and curly wooden hair. No glitter under his slackened eyelids answered mine. He was asleep. "I don't do this for you," I whispered. "I never have. Is that my sin?"

Or is my sin greed? I want something for myself. I always have.

I felt Saul's mouth on mine again. I still smelled, a little, like him. When he went back to his life, I was going to keep the sheets unwashed for as long as I could stand it. I would take deep lungfuls of that scent every time I needed to, until it faded like everything did, especially everything good.

There was so little unmitigated good in the world. The corruption crept in everywhere. How long would it be before I could no longer lay claim to my own soul?

Had I just made the same mistake Mikhail had, trusting a woman who wasn't truly human, tainted with hellbreed? Did that mean that everyone who trusted me had made the same mistake?

Did I kill you, Mikhail? I wish you could tell me. I need to know.

I leaned forward, my clammy forehead on my tense and clutching hands. Dusk was coming, I could feel it like a compass must feel north. Thunder rattled; the storm would probably wait until nightfall and the great gush of cool nightly wind from the river to unleash its fury. Somewhere in the city the Weres were hunting a rogue, and they would be kind when they caught him. He wouldn't feel a thing.

But for me, it was going to be vengeance. Whether Cenci took my bargain or not, it was going to be fury and hatred and messiness, spilled blood and screaming.

After all, that was what I lived for, right?

Just stop it. Mikhail's dead no matter what you intended, and you have a job to do. Just be happy Saul is out there somewhere in the world, that he even exists. Quit moaning and get on with it. This is your big night, you don't want to be late.

I could have been happy with being a little later. But I stood up, and I did something I hadn't done since my teenage years.

I approached the altar with slow steps, climbed the steps, and stood right next to the bank of candles and flowers, in the midst of their heady fragrance. They adorned what in pagan times would be a site of bloody sacrifice, whether done kindly or cruelly.

Times have changed a lot less than we think.

I looked up into the wooden face of the man on the cross, under the shelf of carved hair and runnels of painted decorative blood from jagged thorns. A great howling cheated scream rose up inside me, was savagely repressed, and died away.

What could I say to a God who had never spoken to me and a Son who slept?

"You give out redemption, don't you?" My whisper sounded very loud in the silence, broken only by the hissing of candleflames. "If you're not too busy right now, I could use a handful. Maybe even just a pinch."

I was still begging. Just like the girl I had been, before. The weakling.

I'd been taught a better prayer, hadn't I?

O my Lord God, do not forsake me when I face Hell's legions. In Thy name and with Thy blessing, I go forth to cleanse the night My lips shaped the words, and the candleflames flattened. The scar on my wrist grumbled uneasily, a hot hard knot under the skin, infected.

I shut the thought of Mikhail away, along with the thought of Saul. It took a physical effort, a tensing of every muscle. When it was done, I inhaled, let out a long huff of air.

The click sounded inside my head. I'd never told Mikhail about this switch in the very bottom of me, the one I could now flip. I could lift off, shutting away everything but the job that had to be done, the shining path of vengeance laid out before my feet. That road might eventually end at Hell's bony clutching gates, but at least I'd take plenty of the predators who preyed on the weak with me. Maybe a few innocents would survive a little longer because I was out getting dirty.

Enough whining. The night could use some cleansing. I was just the girl to get it done. If the Weres kept the rogue out of my way, and if Cenci's need for revenge on her hellspawn father was greater than her need for revenge on me, and if Perry's interest in me would keep him from interfering, and if..

I was counting on a lot of ifs, and on a lot of hellbreed jealousy. I was also counting on Navoshtay Niv Arkady being killable, which was by no means certain.

"Only one way to find out." My voice echoed in the church's cloistered quiet, the sunsword ringing softly underneath it. The ruby at my throat was warm and comforting. I had never seen a priest in here, but the doors were always open. I was glad on both counts; if I did see a priest now, I wasn't quite sure I could control my sarcasm. It would hurt too much to be respectful, and in any case I've never done submission well.

Did the man on the cross mind? Did he forgive me for it, knowing I was as I'd been made? By the same hand that had made him, the same hand that abandoned him to be nailed up for sins he didn't commit? Sins he had no choice but to pay for, over and over again?

Was memory a curse for the man on the cross too?

Quit fucking around, Kismet. Get your ass moving.

I did. But as I left the church I felt comforted, for once. I pushed open the doors and stepped out into an early evening eerily dark with storm clouds covering the sky's bright eye. In the west was a crimson streak. Dusk was coming, the sun sinking under the rim of the earth and night rising to start its games.