Heaven's Spite

14

I just barely cleared the hall. Normally I’d want them to come at me one at a time, but Riverson was still screaming and I didn’t want to be trapped with Belisa at my back, even if she was unconscious when I left her in the shattered conference room.

Four ’breed, dark-haired males. Just as many Traders, all of them frozen and snarling as I burst through the hole in the wall where the iron door used to be. One of the Traders—pale, shark’s teeth, claws and joints altered strangely so he crouched like a spider—hunched over Riverson, tittering. My first shot took the titterer in the shoulder and he folded down shapelessly, a gout of black-laced crimson hanging in the air behind him as time slowed down and the mark turned into a live coal against my skin.

There’s one certain way to get your ass handed to you while you’re fighting hellbreed. That’s to do it while distracted. Everything vanished but the fight in front of me, and it was a relief.

The Monde is familiar territory. I’ve fought there before, and I know its interior. I should have worked back along the wall to my left and gained the high ground of the stage. Instead I ended up in the middle of blank space, Traders circling and the ’breed hanging back, Riverson moaning like a child caught in a bad dream and twisting against the handcuffs.

I did not particularly care if he came down with a severe case of dead. I did care if he did so without giving me all the information he had, and I wasn’t fool enough to think that he had. Yet.

When they recovered from the shock of finding me here instead of Perry, things were going to get ugly. So, I got ugly first.

Sometimes, the best defense is an attack. I put the one in front of me down with two shots, and the hole in the circling ring closed almost instantly. A half turn, another shot, but this one went wide because my instincts screamed and I threw myself aside, aiming to break for the stage. It was still my best shot, especially since all of them were focusing on me and not on the screaming blind bartender.

It just became a question of which ones were going to be in my way when I broke for it. But first I had to deal with the Trader leaping on me. The whip cracked, silver jangling.

No hunter carries a whip just because. We do it to give ourselves extra reach. It buys us those critical seconds of shock and pain, extends the circle of how far we can lay on the hurt. And this time it just might save my ass. If I could kill a few more of them.

The Trader dropped without a sound. Then they all jumped, and it became a melee.

When you’re clearing a hellbreed hole, there’s one good thing. You don’t have to worry about where you’re shooting, because every shot will get someone who deserves it. All I had to do here was avoid hitting Riverson, who technically did deserve it, but still.

The click inside my head sounded, and every edge and surface stood out in sharp clarity. The shining path of action and reaction unfurled inside my head, and I dropped into that state of fighter’s grace where every bullet bends to your will and each one is a life taken. Hellbreed ichor splattered, I was somehow on my knees, bending back while firing, the whip curling. Then I was up again, a shutterclick of motion and I rolled sideways, gaining my feet in a convulsive leap as the body hit the concrete with a sound like a wet, rotting pumpkin tossed from an overpass. The stage was coming up fast, nobody between me and it, but any moment now one of the smarter ones might get the idea to head back toward Riverson and see if I twitched.

So I spun, heels skidding and striking sparks, and bolted straight for them again. They scattered, one of them keening in a high, unearthly wail. One more down, the blood exploding from his mouth and painting the floor in a splattering gout. I shot him again to make sure, calculations flashing through my brain. How much ammo was left in the gun, what the next move was, how far it was to Riverson, who was crawfishing wildly on the floor, trying to get out of the handcuffs. I could have used a silver-laced grenade, but the chances of fragging the person I had to question further were too high, and if I slowed down to get him behind the bar with me I might end up dead.

A copper-pale streak in the corner of my peripheral vision. What the fu—

The world turned over, hard. Down on the floor, trigger pulled, the ’breed on top of me snarling. It was the one with long greasy dreadlocks and a tubercular flush, cherry red lips widening and spraying me with hot acid spittle. Scrabbling, hand slapping a knife hilt and pulling it free, stabbing and twisting and had to move to get him off me, or I’d be swarmed and they would pull me limb from limb like a fly in the hands of a cruel little boy.

I shot him twice more, the silver smashing through his torso. This time I didn’t have to switch to knives; the stupid bastard was lying on my guns. Crunching. Wet rasping sounds. A howl. A scream, cut short on a gurgle. I shoved the mass of decaying hellbreed off me and gained my knees—

—and stopped, staring in amazement.

Melisande Belisa, stark naked except for a heavy iron collar running with thin golden scratches, the bruising of Chaldean crawling over her skin and aura, twisted the last Trader’s head in her delicate hands. The greenstick crack of a neck breaking echoed, and Riverson’s screams died away. He hitched in a breath, but some instinct probably warned him to keep quiet and hope neither of us noticed him.

Those black eyes came up to mine, and under the mask of bruising on her face, the Sorrow smiled gently. Her teeth were small and white, one of the front ones jaggedly broken, and as I watched it fell out, hitting the concrete with a small definite sound. That gaptooth grin was wide, friendly, and utterly chilling. A new sliver of white broke through the bloody pink cavern in her gums.

Just like a shark, I thought. There’s always another tooth waiting.

Broken bodies lay strewn around. The last ’breed hit the door at a good clip, tumbling out into sunlight. I stared.

The Sorrow rose fluidly from her crouch. Took two tiny staggering steps. Then her black eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped, going to her knees and keeling over. The collar ran with weird gold wires of light. She ended up curled in the fetal position, and a rumble of sorcery died away, swirling back into her bruised, coppery skin. Shadows moved, like the dappled shade of leaves on a hot day, over her flesh.

Chaldean sorcery. How many of them had she put down?

Riverson was making a soft sucking sound like a child caught in a nightmare. For a few moments I just knelt there and stared.

Then the need to get moving started deep in my bones, an itch like chickenpox. I hauled myself up and dug in my pocket for another set of handcuffs.

Perry had redecorated, but not much. Plush white carpet, a mirrored bar gleaming along one side ranked with pristine clear bottles, either empty or full of shifting gray smoke that made screaming faces when I glanced at it. The bank of television screens was there, but only the closed-circuit ones were live, showing the interior of and entrances to the Monde. The others, usually filled with news feeds, were blank and dead like gouged-out eyes.

The bed, draped with white gauze and a snowy counterpane, was there too. Belisa’s nakedness lay tossed over it, shadows crawling over her skin and retreating. The Chaldean sorcery would repair her inside and out, bringing her into perfect order soon enough. She hadn’t taken nearly enough damage to put a Sorrow down.

I held the gauze down over his head wound, taped it. Didn’t care if I caught his graying hair on the tape and he’d have to pull it off. Riverson shuddered. His filmy eyes blinked madly. His upper lip was slicked with snot.

At least he was still breathing.

“There.” I took a deep breath. “Who were they, Riverson? Where do I start looking?” And where is my Were? I still couldn’t rule out Perry taking him. Though I had to consider that maybe the masked ’breed could have something to do with it—but why would he, or whoever he was working for, distract me with a pile of bodies and take Saul? As an opening gambit? Why not just kill him, too?

That was an unhelpful thought. To say the least.

I glanced at the bed again, checking the Sorrow. She was out cold, or at least she looked like it.

I couldn’t kill her just yet. I had to find out what she was up to.

I was beginning to wish I had access to some of those chains downstairs, though. Silver-plated handcuffs were not going to cut it for a Sorrow, though the collar looked vaguely familiar. The golden light turned out to be runes running under the surface of the metal, the queer, fluidly spiked writing of the Chaldean ceremonial alphabet.

Which was thought-provoking. The runes marched in orderly streams, like ants following formic trails.

He was shivering so hard his graying, blood-soaked hair quivered. “I. Thought. Thought we were. Dead.”

“You almost were.” And you’re close to it now, too. I stepped back, my boots leaving dark prints on the carpet. There was a trail from the door to the bed, and I kept half an eye on the closed-circuit screens. “Start talking, blind man. You’re a lucky bastard, you know that? Who were they? Who do they work for? What faction wants me dead this much?” And where the hell is Perry?

He swallowed several times, throat working. “I…”

A slow singsong female purr came from the bed, the sibilants slightly slurred. “Oh, don’t be shy.” Melisande was awake. “Have you been telling secrets? You’ve been naughty, little man.”

If you’ve ever heard a Sorrow pronounce the word man, you’ve heard the very meaning of contempt. There are two functions for males inside a Sorrows House—warrior drone or slave.

Neither has a very long life span.

Now I had to keep an eye on Belisa too, as well as the closed-circuit. Fortunately I’d settled myself against the bar at an angle where I could see everything and the door, too.

I would have bet it was right where Perry habitually stood. The thought filled me with unsteady loathing. That is, any sliver of me the red tide of rage wasn’t flooding.

“Don’t pay any attention to Chaldean whores, Riverson.” The words fell flat in the motionless air. Here in Perry’s bedroom, the corruption was thick and rank, and the scar plucked wetly against my forearm. The Talisman vibrated against my chest, a second heartbeat. “I’m all you need to worry about right now.” And boy howdy, should you be worrying.

“I can tell you who has taken your pet, Judith.” Soft and slip-sliding, she spoke as if she was in the incense-dark hush of a House. “I can tell you much more besides. I see my gift reached its destination intact. Do you like having it back?”

I was halfway to the bed without realizing it, the gun free in my hand and Riverson shrinking back against the glass and chrome of the bar. The effort of stopping made sweat spring up all over me, prickling as if each droplet was a fine hair.

That name. That goddamn name.

She’d cherry-picked it out of Mikhail’s files, and it had won me the chance to slip free of the monthly visits to Perry. If Perry hadn’t been so hot to use his newfound psychological leverage on me, I might have fallen neatly into his trap. Instead, I’d fallen into Belisa’s.

And here she was again, mouthing the name of a dead girl. A girl with dark hair, wide, brown eyes and a bright, needy smile. A girl who had shivered on a street corner, whose ghost Mikhail had pulled out of a snowbank and remade.

The shadow of my right-hand gun twitched against pale carpeting. I forced the barrel down.

Careful, Jill. Be very careful. She’s in cahoots with Perry. Don’t do something that will damn you. There wasn’t a good enough reason to kill her yet.

When she was on her feet and ready to fight back, when I knew what was going on and how she fit into it, when I had Saul back and this little situation all tied up neatly, that was when she could die.

But it would be so satisfying to blow her head off. And there she was, naked on the bed, one of her coppery haunches lifted as her body lay torqued. Her hair, tangled and sticky with dried blood and helbreed ichor, made small whispering sounds against the comforter. The bruises were fading, driven back by the leaf-dappled shadow of Chaldean. The collar was thick enough to clasp her neck and rest on her slim shoulders, and the Chaldean script on it made me uneasy.

“Funny.” The word stuck in my throat. “Perry said it was from him. You two should get your stories straight.”

She was wriggling over on her side to look at me. I lifted the gun again, and there was a small, definite click. She froze, and that was good. Because if she kept this up I really was going to empty a clip into her. And hope it worked.

And hope that killing someone when I knew I shouldn’t didn’t damn me enough for Perry to take out a mortgage on the parts of me he couldn’t touch.

Still, one of her black eyes peeped over a fold in the coverlet. “Their little games. They always have to have their little games.”

“Just like Sorrows.” Cut it short, goddammit. Something nasty is going on here, and you need to get to the bottom of it.

“Our games are bigger, Judith.”

Fury rose wine-dark inside me. The Talisman hummed. “Call me that one more time, Belisa, and I will ventilate your skull.”

It didn’t faze her. Then again, not much fazes them. “You haven’t killed me yet. You’re uncertain. I’ll tell you a few things and you’ll take the handcuffs and this damnable slave-collar off me. Then we will find your hellbreed friend, and after we bar passage to his superior we will spread his bowels upon the earth.”

I wanted to shrug, but if I moved I knew I was going to squeeze the trigger. “I can do that without you.”

“No, you can’t. Not if they have your cat.” She laughed, a sound like battered, wrongly musical wind chimes. “You don’t even know what you’re fighting.”

“Argoth.” The name made the heavy etheric bruising tighten, as if it expected a punch. Riverson shivered and moaned. It was a good guess.

She twitched, jerking. The collar ran with golden light, flaring. She laughed again, a pained rasp, and the glow settled.

Now that was interesting.

When she spoke it was a curiously atonal singsong, as if she’d memorized it. “Let’s talk about something you’re more interested in. Why do you think Perry has been so interested in your lineage, child? One of yours did his enemy a disservice. Now you must repay the debt.” A slow blinking of the tar-black eye I could see. Like a snake’s eye, actually, the lid never quite covering it. She moved, very slightly. “And how do you think the hunter of your lineage had the strength to shut away one of Hell’s highest scions? He had help. He made a bargain.”

I backed up, shot a glance at Riverson. He was so pale he was almost transparent, holding on to the minibar. The smoke in the bottles behind him flashed crystalline-blue for a moment, and I stilled. My blue eye deciphered no pulsing of ill intent.

“It’s true,” he said tonelessly. “Believe it or not, Kismet, it’s true. Mikhail didn’t tell you. I guess he didn’t have time.”

I couldn’t help it. I glanced back at Belisa. Sourness filled my throat. There were a hell of a lot of things Mikhail hadn’t told me. I suppose Riverson thought he was doing me a favor by reminding me.

The scar was flushed, obscenely full. I’d been pulling a lot of power through it, and it seemed to be getting steadily stronger, especially when I was worked up. I wondered, like I did so often, if Perry felt it. How many nights had he sat up here, possibly feeling it, while I killed things like him?

“Riverson,” I whispered. “I told you not to say his name.”

The gun jerked. The sound of the shot was a thunder crack.

Riverson howled, sliding off the stool. His knee was a mess of hamburger and blood, he hit the ground hard. I almost felt sorry for the old man.

Almost.

I was on him a second later, scooping him up. I carried him across the acres of white carpeting and dumped him on the bed, across Belisa. Her fingers worked like bloodless, active little maggots, twitching as she writhed against the handcuffs. I should have gagged her, but I didn’t care enough to do it now.

And I didn’t want to get any closer than I had to, collar or no. If I got much closer I wouldn’t shoot her. I’d cut her fucking throat like she cut Mikhail’s, and what I’d do afterward didn’t bear mentioning.

And I would feel good about doing it, too. The abyss was howling my name, and this time it wasn’t Perry pushing me to the edge.

Or was it?

Riverson kept screaming. I waited until he had to stop for breath. “Enjoy each other, kids. Hope the next set of ’breed finds you soon.”

I knew Belisa would be out of the cuffs and on Riverson before anyone else could happen along. You can’t trust a Sorrow around a man—they’re carnivorous, like praying mantises.

It wasn’t a nice thing to do. But I am not a nice person.

And to find Saul, I would get a whole lot nastier.

“Kisssssmet!” Riverson, howling. He’d got his breath back with a vengeance. “Kissssmet I’m telling the truuuuuuuth!”

“Yeah,” I muttered as I turned on my heel. “Sure you are.”

I got out of there.