Heaven's Spite

23

It was just as Perry said—a nice three-story in Greenlea, never my favorite part of Santa Luz.

Greenlea is just north of downtown, in the shopping district. If you’re really looking, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the granite Jesus on top of Sisters of Mercy, glowering at the financial district. But Greenlea’s organic froufrou boutiques and pretty little restaurants don’t like seeing it. Sometimes I think it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark obscured from certain places in the city, especially around downtown.

The last time I’d been down here, I’d been tracking down a voodoo queen’s rage before it could unleash a hellbreed’s idea of a circus on my town. That would have been unpleasant, and Perry had been up to his eyebrows in it as well.

Crackerbox houses, postage-stamp yards, yuppies and the upwardly mobile jealously watching for any sign of weakness in their neighbors. The bitch who used to live out here—Lorelei—had made quite a living for herself from their petty squabbles, for a very long time.

Her bakery and coffee shop was now a place claiming to sell vegan Thai and Indian food. I shuddered at the mere notion, and Saul had looked puzzled when he saw the sign.

You can’t explain vegan ethnic to a carnivore. You just can’t.

The entire neighborhood—centered around one street with two high-end bookstores, vegan eateries, a coffee shop, and a couple of kitschy-klatch places selling overpriced junk—was quiet. There’s a few antique stores down at one end, and a fancy bakery and two pricey bars at the other. This particular house was at Seventh and Mariposa, a high wooden fence around its tiny yard and every window glazed with venetian blinds. Everyone was at work, looking to afford the property taxes, and the main shopping drag was two blocks over. The street was quiet, but it wouldn’t stay that way when quitting time arrived and the hipsters came home.

I parked two blocks away behind a closed-down whole-foods warehouse just to be sure, then pushed Belisa into the backseat and laid her down, making sure the pin holding the collar closed was secure. The chain rattled. She sighed. Her flayed feet were healing. Long tangled dark hair, and if she closed her eyes you could see where she would be pretty. The exotic sort of woman a man would look twice at on the street.

But those black eyes were holes into another place. She didn’t close them. I had to watch for a few seconds to make sure she was blinking.

My right hand moved. The gun was out of its holster in a hot heartbeat, barrel pressed against her forehead. It would be so easy, and the mess in the backseat wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever cleaned up.

No, Jill. Don’t do it.

She blinked again. Utterly helpless. Revulsion twisted my stomach.

Not this way. If you kill her, make it clean. Don’t be like what you hunt.

You don’t live long as a hunter if you’re not willing to just get the fucking job done, with whatever means are to hand. But there is a line you cannot cross, and the only guide for where that line is rests inside your skull. You could call it conscience, I guess. It’s not your teacher or your lover, it’s not even God. Because you can fool all of them, some of the time. When it counts.

The only person you take accounting with as a hunter is yourself. And I knew as surely as I was breathing, if I pulled the trigger on Melisande Belisa right now, I would be damning myself. It would be easy for Perry to own me after that step.

I breathed out a soft curse. I was wet with sweat, the way I never am unless I’ve been fighting hard. The clammy-cold film reeked of adrenaline and a bitter copper tang.

Fear.

It was a struggle to put the gun away. My arm actually physically resisted, muscles locking. I tipped my head back and swore, and finally got the .45 back in its dark little home.

I closed Belisa in the car and left her there. It would get hot with the thin winter sun beating down, but I found I didn’t care.

I shimmied up over the board fence from the house next door and dropped down cat-soft. Drew my right-hand gun again, surveyed the backyard. The grass hadn’t been cut, and the entire house was a brackish bruise of etheric contamination.

Oh yeah. We’ve got hellbreed. Hang on, Saul. I’m coming.

No cover. It was bare as a bone except for metallic trash cans clustered near the high wooden gate to the front. Coming over that way might have caused a racket.

Three concrete steps up to the back door. My blue eye caught no betraying quiver of ill intent, nothing to suggest there were hellbreed here beyond the thick etheric bruising. No hint of Saul.

But then, they would want to keep him well hidden. In a basement, probably, since the picture had shown him on concrete.

Hold on, baby. I’m on my way.

A thin high horsetail cloud scudded in front of the sun, the light darkening a bit. It was a bad omen, but it was still daylight.

The doorknob was ice-cold. I exhaled softly between my teeth, sorcery tingling in my fingers. The scar tensed, sensing something it was akin to. I wondered if Perry had managed to get out of the iron rack yet, banished the thought. Sorcery requires fierce, relaxed concentration, and if I kept thinking about Perry and what he’d told me I was going to be anything but relaxed.

The deadbolt eased free with a snick. I winced, waited. No sound. It was child’s play to undo the other lock, and I twisted the knob a little at a time. It eased free.

I shoved it open, stepping to the side in case they opened fire, then stepped back and dove through, rolling to come up in a crouch. It was a hall that had been turned into a utility room, a washer and dryer standing to attention and a little bamboo-mat thing to clean your shoes.

Dead silence, sunlight falling through windows. The gun tracked, every inch of me alert and quivering, ready for all hell to break loose.

Nothing. Not a peep. A tang of hellbreed corruption, sick-sweet, and a fading ghost of dark spice and clean fur, familiar to me as my own breath.

Saul.

Nothing. No betraying creaks or little whispers, no sense of breathing habitation houses get when someone’s around. I braced my back against the wall, drawing my other gun. My stomach turned over hard as I gapped my mouth, tasting the air. There was another smell under the perfume of supernatural. It was the gassy note of mortal death.

No.

The kitchen was as empty as a dry well, all the cabinets closed and the sinks clear. Whoever lived here was a big believer in minimalism. Either that or they spent so much money affording the house they couldn’t buy more than a cheap round table and two scavenged chairs.

There was the door that probably led to the cellar, open just a crack. Nothing but darkness beyond. I ghosted up to it through two bars of wintry sun, toed it until it swung wide and disclosed wooden stairs going down into absolute darkness. There was a light switch, difficult to flip with my elbow but I managed it. The little sound it made was loud in the thick silence.

I was suspecting there weren’t any hellbreed in the house. If there weren’t…

The stairs were solid, at least. I hate going down cellar stairs, they’re often open and something reaching through to grab you isn’t just for horror movies. So I went down fast, easier to keep my balance and gave me an edge if anything was waiting to trip me up.

But there was nothing. I reached the bottom, slid along the wall, and ended up in a defensible corner.

The cellar was empty. The concrete floor was cracked and uneven in places, but I could see the marks where something very heavy had been scraped around.

There were other marks, too. A smear of something that was red paint, a different color from the faint bloodstains. And something else. A shapeless lump of material. Suede, its fringes lying dead and discarded.

Hot bile whipped the back of my throat. It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten. I would have spread every bite of it over the concrete floor.

A faint whispering sound. My head jerked up, tracking it. A rushing, like water. My blue eye pierced the etheric bruising for a second; I saw the geometric shapes of a hellbreed curse sparking and flowing in an intricate pattern.

The Talisman sang, a high piercing note. I immediately bolted for the steps, and that was probably what saved me. Because I smelled smoke, and the house overhead exploded with a dry wump that sucked a draft of cool air past me. I made the kitchen just in time to dive for the utility room as a wall of orange flame with blue wires at its edges burst through from the living room. The curse had triggered up on the top floor and moved down, probably to catch me like a rat in a rain barrel.

Another trap. I’d walked right into it, and I had a sneaking suspicion the owners of this place would be among the dead near the freeway.

And the hellbreed had moved Saul.

I dove out the back door a bare fraction of a second before the wall of hell-fueled fire coughed free. Rolled, came up and swept the yard with both guns. Nothing but the pale glare of fire in sunlight, sweeping up the brick like great, grasping, throb-veined hands, the flames oily and edged with blue. The heat was monstrous, crisping the grass as I skipped back. The board fence was smoldering.

Holy shit. I ran up against the boards, not quite believing what I was seeing. Survival took over, the guns were stowed, and I was on top of the fence in a heartbeat, balanced like a tightrope walker.

Something exploded. The concussion blew me off the fence. I flew, weightless, hit another fence hard, wood splintering in great jagged pieces. Glass shattered—the shock wave blew out windows in neighboring houses. I hit something else with a snapping crunch and found myself in the ruins of a kid’s swing set. The cheap metal had twisted and bent instead of breaking, or I’d have been wearing some of it through me.

It was broad fucking daylight. Next would come sirens and attention. I swore internally, struggled to my feet, and vanished.