Night Shift

Chapter Seven

Night rose from the alleys and bars, spreading its cloak from the east and swirling in every corner. No matter how tired I am, dusk always wakes me up like six shots of espresso and a bullet whizzing past. It's a hunter thing, I suppose. If we aren't night owls when we begin, training and hunting make us so before long.

I surfaced from the velvet blankness between dreams, slowly. All was as it should be, the warehouse creaking and sighing as the wind came up from the river like it does every sunset, smelling of chemical-laden water and heat. My eyes drifted open, finding a familiar patch of blank wall. A knife-hilt dug into my ribs, hard. I blinked.

Then I rolled out of bed, catching myself on toes and palms, and did the pushups. Just like every time I woke up. Press against the wooden floor, bare toes cold, shoulders burning. Up. Up. Up.

Like a wooden plank. Nice and straight. Mikhail's voice again, so familiar I barely noticed it.

When I finished the second set, it was time for the sit-ups. Then I padded, yawning and scratching, out into the practice room. Mikhail's sword glittered in one last random reflection, dying sunlight jetting through a skylight to touch the hole in the hilt. The glitter was gone as soon as it happened, I hung the harness that held my knives and guns up on its peg. Yawned one more time, the silver charms in my hair shifting, as I settled, my feet hip-width apart, and found my center.

The fighting art of hunters is a hodgepodge. Name any martial art, and we've kiped a move or two. Savate, kung fu, plenty of judo—we do a lot of wrestling on the floor, actually—escrima, karate, good old streetlight fisticuffs—which is mostly common sense and retraining the flinches out of you than anything else—t'ai chi… really, the list is endless and a hunter is always picking new things up. There's even a style of fighting Weres train their young with, relying on quickness and evasion, that Mikhail thought was good for me. It's like a dance, and several hunters take ballet for flexibility and balance. Every hunter accumulates a set of favorite moves that work well, but you always have to revisit even the ones you don't like.

You never know what will save your ass.

After a half-hour of katas, I grabbed a pair of knives from the rack on the wall and really went to work. Knife fighting is close and dirty, and it's my forte. I'm smaller than the average hunter, and even before the scar on my wrist I had quicker reflexes than most.

Women usually do.

Mikhail had to train nastiness into me, though, and the ruthless willingness to hurt. Without it, even the quickest reflexes won't save you.

Mikhail.

Get up. My knives clove the air, whistling, spinning around my fingers, elbow-strikes, smashing the face with the knee. Get up, milaya. Or I will hit you again. Get up!

My own helpless sobs echoed in my ears, from years and miles away. My body moved easily now, gracefully, forms as strict as a dance become muscle memory, instinctive now. That wasn't always the case. I had been gawky and helpless when he'd found me, a teenage girl more used to streetwalking than lunge-kicks. The first year of my training had been hell in more ways than one.

Step, kick, turn, take out the knee, upward slash, break the neck with a quick twist, stamp and turn. The blades gleamed in the dimness as the last light of day leached out of the skylights. Metal sang as I flung both knives, the solid tchuk as they met the scarred block of wood set across the practice room reassuring. "Not so bad," I whispered, and then it was time for the heavy bag.

I started out easy, double and triple punches, working myself into a rhythm. I have to be careful; if you've got a hellbreed-strong fist, you have to hold back even when your heavy bag is reinforced. Elbow strike, knee, the rapid tattoo mixing with exhaled breath at the end of each blow.

Sweat dripped stinging into my eyes. Not because of the effort, but because I'd been dreaming again. Memory rose like a riptide, swallowing me whole.

Snow. Shivering, the cold nipping at fingers and toes, exposed knobs of my knees raw and aching. Taste of iron and slick tears at the back of my throat. The place where he'd hit me throbbed, a swallowing brand of fire, and the gun was heavy in my hand.

I'd done it. I had committed murder, and I'd taken Val's gun. Still, the thing I worried about most was the money. The thought that he'd cut me, hurt me, maybe mark my face if he found me now, wasn't eased in the slightest by the fact that I'd shot the motherfucker.

The clock was still ticking inside my head. Tick tock, tick tock.

A white Oldsmobile eased by, its windows down even in the blinding cold, and a beer bottle smashed on the pavement. They yelled, and my dry eyes barely blinked. The gun was on my right side, hidden by my thin cotton dress.

I had already killed. I had already committed the greatest sin possible, to crown all my other sins.

If the car slowed down, if they stopped, it would be the last time. The last time.

Split lip, I'd had a split lip and a damn-near dislocated shoulder, and a busted-up spleen—and those were only the lightest injuries. Mikhail told me later it was a wonder I'd been walking, he could smell the blood and hurt on me even across the street.

Punch, bag shudders, follow it up with elbow, lift the knee, move in low, the force on a punch has to come from the hip just like whip-work or it's useless.

Useless. Like I used to be.

The purring of the Oldsmobile's engine returned, growing louder. I stopped, head hanging, fingers tightening on the cold metal Men. All of them, men. The same type of men I'd been so close to, so many times, swallowing if I had to, spitting when I could, letting my body do things while the real part of me retreated into a little box—a box that grew smaller and smaller each time.

When it finally became too small, would I vanish?

I had already sailed off the edge of the world. Now I just had to take as many of them with me as I could before I was finally put down. I turned, eyes wide, headlights blinding me, gun lifting—and warm fingers clamped around my wrist.

No, the tall white-haired man had said, another language blurring through the words, a song of a foreign accent. Not tonight, little one.

Kick. Kick. Stamp down, both fists smacking the heavy bag. Fists blurring, low sound of effort through clenched teeth.

I struggled, but he was too strong, and I squeezed the trigger as the car eased past. The sound of the.22 was lost under a blare of the horn and catcalls, and he twisted the gun out of my hand, ignoring the car. I tried to punch him, he didn't seem to move but the punch went wide, and I spun aside, jailing. My arm stretched, my injured shoulder screaming. He let go, and I landed in snow, my skin burning. I coughed, and a bright jet of blood smashed out through my teeth.

The last thing I felt was gentle fingers in my ragged, strawlike dyed-blonde hair. I tried to curse at him, hooked my fingers and tried to take off some of his skin. My broken nails scratched only air. I tried to scream, choking on blood.

He had watched me for a few moments, weighing me.

My fists thudded into the bag. I stopped. My ribs flickered as I took in deep heaving breaths. How had he seen anything valuable in that broken girl in the snow? And the gun had vanished; he never mentioned it afterward.

Had he guessed how desperate I'd been, and what I'd done with the goddamn gun before he'd seen me? Did he care? Monty never mentioned my police record. Then again, my name was different by the time he met me. I was different, all the way down to the bone. Sometimes I wondered if my fingerprints had changed.

I gave the heavy bag one last punch, listening as it swayed on its chain. The creaking was familiar, and echoed through the warehouse. My breathing evened out, and my eyes tracked across the wall. A long slim shape under a fall of amber silk, the crossbow and hunting bow, the mace and the wooden spear with its tassels rusty and clumped together, its tip gummed with black residue.

And Mikhail's sword, a faint glow running through the clawed finials, the empty space in the hilt watching me.

The carved ruby in the hollow of my throat warmed, responding. Air brushed my skin, the scar twitching as I noticed it again, the preternatural acuity of my senses almost normal now that I'd spent a while with it uncovered. I would have to visit the Monde Nuit early, both to gather information about whatever hellbreed was killing cops, and also to express my displeasure to Perry. He shouldn't be calling me.

It wasn't part of the deal.

Not tonight, little one. I had not known my teacher's voice then. I hadn't known it was the voice of salvation.

As if I deserved salvation, deserved to be plucked from the snow and given a new life.

I don't want to think about this. "Mikhail," I whispered. The whisper bounced back, taunted me. He was dead, choked on his own blood, betrayed by a viper in woman's clothing, and I was still here. I hadn't been able to save him.

All the training, all the striving, all the pain—and I still had not been able to save him.

The heavy bag stilled, its chain making a slow sound of metal under tension. I wanted to kick it again, listen to the familiar creaking, but I didn't. Instead, I turned on my heel and stalked for the door, grabbing my harness from its peg.

I needed a shower.

One thing about, being a hunter—sometimes your night doesn't work out exactly as planned. All I wanted was a few drinks to brace me before I had to go into the Monde, so I headed toward Micky's on Mayfair Hill, among the gay nightclubs and high-priced fetish boutiques. Micky's is a quiet place, an all-night restaurant where trouble never starts—because not only is it the place where the gay community comes to canoodle over blintzes, beer, and specialty pancakes, it's also staffed with Weres. Pretty much any night you can find a few nightsiders drinking, or stuffing themselves with human food, or just sitting and having a cup of coffee under the pictures of old film stars watching from the walls.

If you're on the nightside and you're legal, you're welcome in Micky's. Even if you're not-so-legal you're welcome, as long as you pay your tab and don't start any trouble.

I was heading up Bolivar Street to the foot of Mayfair when something brushed against my consciousness, and I put the Impala into a bootlegger's turn, headed back and around the corner onto Eighteenth. Tires smoked and screeched; a horn blared behind me, and I zagged the Impala into a halfass parking spot in an alley and was out of the car in a flash, my senses dilating.

The reek of the thing I was hunting smashed through my nose, and I felt more than heard its footsteps like a brush against a drum. Moving fast, and moving away.

I bolted out into the street, plunged into an alley on the other side, and scaled the side of the building by tearing my way up the outside of the fire escape. Vaulted over the side of the roof and began to run, my coat flapping behind me.

The baked smell of daylight still simmered up from pavement and rooftop, but the stink cut right through it with a harsh serrated edge. I leapt, etheric force pulled through the suddenly blazing scar, and hit a tenement rooftop going full speed, barely rolling to shed a little momentum, glad once again that I wear leather pants. Denim can get shredded when you're going this fast.

I don't wear leather because it makes my ass look cute, you know.

Fuck this thing's quick, watch it Jill, cross street coming up, you can head it off if it keeps going in a straight line—

But of course it couldn't be that easy. I landed hard in the middle of Twenty-Ninth Street, the shock slamming up through my hips and shoulders as I ended up on one knee, concrete smoking and puffing up dust under the strain of my sudden application of force. Air screamed away from my body, my coat snapping like a flag in a hard breeze. Two blocks down, an indistinct quadruped shape—the streetlight had burned out—squeezed down into the road itself.

Oh, shit Please don't tell me it did what I think it just did. But I was already moving, and lo and behold things were about to get interesting.

The son of a bitch had just gone down through a manhole. The manhole cover lay off to one side, dents in its surface I didn't have time to examine. I also didn't have time to drag it back so a car wouldn't break an axle in the hole. No, I just breathed an imprecation and leapt, dropping down through the hole with arms and legs pulled close, bracing myself for whatever waited at the bottom.

And hoping I didn't hit anything on the way down.

The resulting thud had a splash attached, liquid splattering up to paint the crumbling concrete walls, and a new and interesting smell of waste threatened to knock me off my feet. Mixed with the gagging stench of the thing I chased, it was a heady bouquet.

Well, at least if it stinks that bad I can track it. No ambush waited for me down below. I finished sliding a knife from its sheath and noticed something strange.

The smell of the thing was different It didn't reek of hellbreed, just purely of sickness and fur. The silver in my hair and against my throat didn't start to burn; Mikhail's apprentice-ring on my third left finger didn't prickle with heat.

No time for questions. The water was knee-high and I splashed through, automatically noting how deep I was—it'd been a hell of a fall. Christ It couldn't fall into a nice clean department store, it had to pick a goddamn storm drain. Smells like something's dead down here too. Lovely.

Running. Breath coming harsh and tearing, the knife held reversed along my forearm, my coat snapping and popping like a guitar riff, the liquid turning even soupier as tunnels began to branch off. I followed the worst smell, my gag reflex triggered—I didn't have time to throw up. Jesus. This is foul. Why doesn't it smell like hellbreed? My coat is never going to be the same.

Branching tunnels. A left, a right, a soft left in an intersection of four ways—did this thing know where it was going? Was it running blind or luring me into something?

I hate this sort of thing. The sludge started getting deeper, and the tunnel slanted downhill. I really hate this sort of thing.

Covered in guck, stinking to high heaven—there was something dead in the water—I reached a wide, deep chamber with a cleaner smell. A faint green glow bounced off the water's oily surface and dappled the walls. Above, pipes tangled, and several different round openings led off in different directions.

For the second time, maddeningly, the smell just quit between one step and the next. I skidded to a stop in thigh-high water, throwing up a sheet of it, and cast about frantically, trying to catch the thread again. A distant clang, like something sharply striking a pipe, tightened every nerve in my body.

To top it all off, the charms in my hair shifted, tinkling, and the silver chain at my throat began to burn. Mikhail's ring heated up, too. The knife blurred back into its sheath even as my blue eye scanned under the surface of the world and found nothing.

The smell was gone.

Goddammit, I REALLY HATE this sort of thing.

I backed up a step or two, and there it was again—but it was fading under the onslaught of fresh water lapping into the chamber, a cold current mouthing my thighs. Breaking a trail with running water, a trick so old even normal humans do it.

But the ability to mask a trail so thoroughly was pure hellbreed. I didn't know of anything else that could do that so cleanly, like a scalpel slicing off a scent.

And hellbreed meant possible nasty surprise lurking somewhere.

This would be a really good time to get out of the water, Jill. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go but one of the pipe openings, and God alone knew what was in those.

My guns cleared leather in both hands, and I turned in a full circle, my eyes—smart and dumb—traveling over every nook and cranny. No use. Whoever it was, they were gone.

The heat drained from my silver. The scar on my wrist prickled, working in toward the bone, unhealthy heat spilling up my arm, jolting in my shoulder as I pulled force through it, worked into taut humming readiness.

"Goddammit." The word couldn't carry the weight of my frustration. I searched for others. "Shit. Shitfuck. Motherfuckingcocksucking fuck on a cheese-coated stick!" My voice bounced and rippled off the water.

A slight sound, behind me.

I spun, water tearing up in a sleek wave as etheric force swirled with me, both guns trained on one particular pipe, big enough for something very nasty to fit in. My pulse smoothed out, quit its hammering, and I tasted copper on my tongue through the reek of sewer coating the back of my nose.

A glimmer, down low. Green-blue and flat, like an animal's eyes at night. My fingers tightened on the trigger even as I sensed another presence and half turned, one gun locking onto the first target, the other locking onto the second. Come out and play, shitheels, whoever you are.

The second one spoke. "Jill?" A female voice, low and husky with a touch of purr behind it. "Don't shoot. I'm coming out with my hands loose. Dominic's with me."

What the hell?

Memory placed the voice. One gun lowered slightly. "Harp?"

Harper Smith slid out of the second pipe. My pulse thundered in my ears as I twitched, amped on adrenaline and oh so close to pulling the trigger.

She's tall—Weres usually are, even females. She moved with the fluidity and precision of a cat Were, all slinking graze and laziness. Long dark hair pulled back in two thick braids, wide liquid dark eyes, and a mouth that always seemed just short of merriment below an aristocratic nose and wide high cheekbones, she was beautiful in the negligent way almost all Weres are. She hung for a moment full-length from a slimmer iron pipe, then curved to land on a larger one, her booted feet placed for maximum effect. Her battered canvas jacket flapped briefly, showing her sidearm, and the feathers braided into her hair fluttered as she cocked her head, examining me.

Her mate, Dominic, peered out of the same pipe she'd been in. "Hey, Kismet." His voice was lower, a bass purr, and his sandy-blond hair was as long as Harp's but pulled back and bound in a club with leather thongs. His eyes glittered briefly too, and I caught a flash of the straight line of his mouth before he withdrew a little, into shadow. "Put the iron away, willya?"

The Terrible Two of the Martindale Squad. What the hell is the FBI doing out here? And two Weres without a hunter… that means a Were problem. I promptly turned my back on them, both guns pointed at the first pipe. "Hey, Dom. What are you guys doing out here?" My fingers tightened on the triggers. "And is that your fucking friend? If it is, you'd better speak up now before I ventilate him."

"Easy, hunter." The third voice was male, low with an edge of vibrating bass like Dominic's. "Don't make me take that gun away from you."

Oh, you did not just say that to me. "Come and try it, cheesecake. Weres don't scare me. Who the fuck are you?"

"Calm down, both of you!" Harp sounded annoyed. "Jill, he's one of ours. He's a tracker from out on the Brightwater Reservation. Saul, come out and introduce yourself. This is Mikhail's student."

I kept the guns trained as the Were moved cautiously forward. He was a long rangy man, his dark hair shoulder-length and left loose, dark eyes flicking down my body to where the water lapped at my thighs and coming back up again. He had the classic Were face—high cheekbones, red-brown skin, thick eyelashes, chiseled mouth.

He looked Native American, like most American Weres. Native American on the cover of a romance novel, that is, a really bodice-ripping one. Jeans and a hip-length leather jacket, a black T-shirt stretching over his chest. The healthy clean scent of Were mixed with the stink, and I was abruptly conscious of being dipped in fetid goo and wet almost clear through.

"Saul." He gave his name grudgingly. "Saul Dustcircle."

"Jill Kismet." I lowered my guns, holstered them both. Measured him for a long moment. I am not going to say it's a pleasure. Then I rounded back on Harp. "What the fuck is the Martindale Squad doing down in the sewers in my city, Harp? Without contacting me, I might add?"

"Left you a message yesterday." Dominic eased forward a little more, crouching with easy grace inside the pipe mouth. He reached up, scratched his cheek with blunt delicate fingertips. "You been busy?"

"That's the goddamn understatement of the year." I should have listened to messages this morning; I knew there was something I'd missed last night. I let out a long breath. "Five cops attacked out on the Drag last night. Montaigne called me in. Something that smells goddamn awful, and has a habit of cloaking itself. I repeat, why are you in my city?"

I should have been a bit more polite, but my nerves were a little thinner than I liked. This disturbed me badly. Something that smelled that terrible should not be able to disappear like a hellbreed could. Plus, I was covered in guck, and they looked cool and imperturbable like Weres always do.

To top it all off, I'd sensed hellbreed, I knew I had. It just kept getting better.

"Easy, Jill." Harp spoke up, soft and calm. "We just blew into town a couple days ago, and had to wait for Saul. We've been trying to reach you."

She took a deep breath, and her eyes met mine. The other male Were—Saul—made a slight scuffing sound as he moved, and I quelled the urge to twitch. He came goddamn close to getting silverjacket lead in his flesh.

I suddenly had a very bad feeling.

Then Harp went and said just about the worst thing she could have. "We have a rogue Were."