Heaven's Spite

29

Crunch.

The whip snapped and Rutger danced back. Perry snarled. The scar boiling with agony on my wrist, I was too slow because I had to fight it. Its tendrils were all the way up to my elbow now, twisting and yanking.

I was screaming. My only battle cry now.

“Saul! Saul! Saul!” His name, over and over again, while the Weres clustered the Traders holding the crosses. Lionesses leapt, and if you haven’t seen the Norte or Sud Luz pack lionesses work together to take down a kill, you’ve missed one of the most amazing sights on earth.

The huge splintered things jerked and danced crazily; Gilberto’s head flopping and Saul moving, looking around. I couldn’t watch, I had my hands full; Rutger skipped toe-tapping aside and Perry leapt for me. I faded to my left, firing, how I was going to reload with a cramping hand and the whip keeping them back was an open question. Perry darted in, took a shot in the shoulder, and snarled. My wrist bloomed with hot acid pain, and he wasn’t bleeding the way he should have been.

That was worrying. If I’d had time to worry, that is.

I was still screaming Saul’s name when Anya appeared, her arms up, the sunsword’s silver length rising forever from her hands. Shock jolted through me.

She can’t use that without a—

The Eye dilated on my chest, singing a long high sustained note of power.

This is why two hunters can take on an army of hellbreed. Because it never occurs to ’breed to give, or to help each other. Each one of them is out for himself, plain and simple, in any melee. None of them ever thinks to share.

You can’t use a sunsword without a key. But I reached, an unphysical movement from the Eye on my chest toward the blade’s hilt, a hand held out in thin air. A red glimmer showed in the empty space trapped in the sunsword’s hilt, whirling as it strengthened.

I might have been damned, but I was still hunter enough to help her. She’d expected me to understand and use the Eye as the key, both of us working in tandem to hold back the tide.

Anya caught hold, strong slim mental fingers in mine. The silver in her hair crackled with blue sparks, and the sun was almost up over the horizon. If we could last long enough for it to break free, we might have a chance.

Flame blossomed against the sunsword’s razor-silver edge. The Eye twitched on my chest, and the fire deepened golden-orange. A thin wire of white ran through the blade’s center, the red gleam in the hilt suddenly a small star, and the fire coughed as it exploded free.

Dawn was early today. The light drenched the bridge, and the leaping sinuous forms of the bonedogs howled and cowered. Rutger screamed, falling in slow motion, as the sword descended.

The scar fought, clawing at the meat of my arm, for control. I shot Perry again, but I was too slow, the world dragging me down and my body refusing to put up with one more damn thing. He collided with me, a huge snapping crunch that turned the world over, I flew. Hit the concrete bridge railing, more things breaking inside me, and a warm gout of blood exploded between my lips.

The crosses swayed, but the Traders had broken and were fleeing. The ’breed hanging in the bridge’s spires slid away like oil, hissing at the terrible light spreading from the sunsword. Anya screamed, a hawk’s cry, and stabbed down. The blade slid through Rutger’s chest as if through soft butter, sinking into the concrete below just as effortlessly. Pavement scorched, and the ’breed’s dying scream was lost in the inferno roar as the sunsword burned, cleansing the corruption.

Don’t let go, Jill. Whatever happened to me, I had to keep the sunsword going. The Eye was a warm weight on my chest, humming along happily as something burned.

Don’t you dare let go.

I tried to get up. My chest was broken, a fragile eggshell in pieces. The warmth between my lips was blood, I coughed up more. Perry bore down on me, his face avid with terrible glee, each footstep making the bridge sway like tall grass in a high wind.

The crosses were down now, Weres crowding them. They were cutting the leather straps free, and as I rolled my head painfully to get a better look, charms digging through my hair and into my skull, I saw two of them lift Saul tenderly between them. Perry’s footsteps drew closer, each one like the heartbeat of some huge monstrous thing.

Relief burst inside me. I turned my head back. Looked up at him.

The sunsword’s light etched lines on his face, eating at the shell of seeming he wore. I coughed again, fresh blood welling up. The scar jolted with sick heat, etheric force like a mass of red-hot wires sliding up the nerve channels and fusing flesh and bone back together. Healing me, probably so he could do more damage. And the corruption from the scar was spreading up to my shoulder.

I cried out, scrabbling weakly, a small sound lost in the chaos.

He loomed over me, his lips shaping words I didn’t want to hear. Just two of them, really.

You’re mine.

Helpless, I just lay and watched. Get up, Jill. Get up and kick his ass.

But Saul was safe, and the Weres had Gilberto too. There was nothing left to do but hold the sunsword’s fire steady, the Eye burning as my blood touched it—

“Goddamn motherfucking sonofabitch, get the fuck away from her!”

Anya. The sunsword’s light turned fierce white, the glare of full noon as the sun lifted its first limb over the rim of the mountains, and the world was lost in that brilliance. The light filled my eyes, my mouth, my nose, all the way down to my toes. I held the sunsword in sight as long as I could, realizing the hopeless broken cawing sounds I was hearing as quiet fell on the bridge were my own screams, my voice ruined.

The shadow that was Perry flinched aside from the assault of light. He was really such a small thing, that shadow.

I blacked out briefly, surfaced still holding the line to the sunsword. Nothing mattered but that line, etheric force thundering through it, and the cleansing light. If I was lucky, it would burn me to ash too, and—

“Let it go, Jill!” Anya yelled. “Let it go, or you’ll melt the bridge! Let go, hunter!”

Again, that snap of command.

So I did, my mental fingers loosening. The white-hot glare receded, bit by bit, and the Eye hummed softly. The sense of pressure building inside the Talisman had bled off significantly. Like the spear hanging in my weapons room, it needed to be drained every once in a while, or it would get dangerous.

Even more dangerous than it usually was, that is. I had to tell Gilberto about it. So many things I had to do.

I lay there. There was a crackle, and a warm bath of sensation. It was healing sorcery, and if Anya was doing that, it meant the fight was over. I shut my eyes and let her work.

If I wasn’t dead, I had to be able to walk for what I had to do next. But for the moment I just lay there on the bridge, listening as the Weres spoke softly and the sounds of hellbreed and Traders fleeing retreated in the distance.