Angel Town (12 page)

Saul was beside me, stamping his right leg twice. It was like striking a drum, and the driveway shuddered before it settled. His eyes were lambent even under the assault of sunshine, and as he straightened it was suddenly easier to breathe.

Anya’s
bindi
flashed, the beads in her hair rattling, and it was a relief to see the same speckled sea-urchin shape to her aura. She opened her eyes cautiously, and took a step forward. The gravel was still in a perfect circle around her booted feet, just as Saul and I carried an area of eerie stillness with us. Outside those calm patches, the gravel popped up, flinging itself about knee-high.

We waited.

The Hill calmed slightly. It was rumbling and unhappy, quivering on the edge of sentience. Before, it would have been cold and tricky during the day, active and dangerous at night.

Now, even under the sun, it felt
treacherous
. And the cold was not physical. It lay under the daylight with its own heavy weight, a prickling like tiny feet wandering all over me, probing delicately into every cavity, tickling every inch.

I shuddered, threw the thought aside, and a buzzing rose momentarily inside my skull.

Oh, you tricky bastard. No, thank you.
Another
flex
, sweat popping out along the curve of my lower back. Even with a hunter’s regulation of body temperature, a few things will make you damp up.

Sorcerous effort. Combat. Sex.

Terror.

The black hole inside my head yawned, and for one vertiginous second I was skating its edge as the walls between me and however I had ended up in a shallow grave crumbled.

Oh, Jill, you are fucked for sure.
A soft, merry voice, my own, inside the dark reaches of my skull.
Fucked six ways from Sunday and hung upside down, too. This was where it happened.

Where
what
happened, though? I returned to myself with a jolt. Saul’s hand over my shoulder, claws needle-poking through the tough leather, just felt, not breaking the borrowed skin. His mouth was close to my ear, warm breath on my skin, and for a bare moment a tide of hot feeling rushed through me, too complex to unravel before my sightless eyes blinked and started relaying information to my busy little brain again.

“Kismet?” Devi, thinly controlled.

“Steady.” The gun was pointed down and to the side, thank God. “Steady as a rock, babe.”

“Doubt it.” But she set off, soundless over the gravel, with a sliding, rolling, hipwise step. “Follow the yellow brick road, children.”

“Ding-dong, the bitch is dead,” I muttered. Only, if the bitch was dead, that bitch was me. Under the dirt with my socks rolled up.

Great. Now was a bad time to be thinking those sorts of things.

Anya laughed again, but softly, lighting with a feral intensity that turned her into a very pretty woman indeed, blue eyes firing and her mouth turning up.
Hides her light under a bushel,
her teacher had remarked to Mikhail, back when we were apprentices. The sort of girl who would wallflower at a party until you actually spoke to her and realized what a sharp mind was behind that pleasant face.

She led along the trail and I swept next, Saul behind and slightly to my left. It was like moving after Mikhail, stepping only where he did, breathing only as he did. You can’t get closer to another human being than when they’re trusting you to do your job and watch their back. Anticipating, guessing, responding to every breath of chill intent against the skin, taking over the angles like clockwork so each is covered, gaze moving in smooth arcs, the little hitch in Anya’s breathing when the gravel began to pop like shrimp in a sauté pan. It evened out immediately, and I thought our hearts were probably matching beat for beat, too.

She was heading for the main steps, and I wondered if the air inside was still reverberating from my last visit here—or at least the last visit I remembered. If the front desk was still smashed, if there was still violence in the air—and if there was a room upstairs where I’d taken apart a hellbreed-built altar, bile burning my throat and the banefire whispering and aching to escape my control.

And the scar on your arm aching as it tried to burrow in toward the bone, Jill. Don’t forget that.
Another soft, sliding, nasty little voice.
The little scar Perry gave you. The mark of Cain.

Cain shot his brother, though. I just shot my pimp. And oh, Christ, I did not want to go back to that night, to the hole in Val’s forehead and the ticking of the clock on the wall. The ticking that would turn into a buzz as tiny feet crawled over my rotting flesh.

“Stop.” My voice cut the thick, cloying silence. “Devi. The windows.”

She glanced up. “What?”

Someone—probably the caretaker who lived in the boiler room, with his filmed gaze, scarred face, and his quart of rye—sometimes haphazardly nailed boards over the windows. They were Band-Aids on gunshot wounds, mostly, with the look of just being put up for appearances.

But now those boards were gone. The five floors of Henderson Hill’s public front—offices on the two lower levels, progressively tighter security on the next three, but no heavy equipment, that was saved for other buildings—stared at us with compound centipede eyes. Some windows were starred with breakage, but the chicken wire mostly held everything up. Scarred, but not broken. On some hungry, avid little windows the cracks looked decorative.

Like war paint, or the crackglaze in the makeup of an aging hooker.

“The windows. Some were covered, before.”

She was halfway through a one-syllable obscenity when chaos broke loose.

H
enderson Hill’s front door shattered and the gravel rose in popping, excited bursts. I caught a flash of motion—something pale and human-shaped, flung aside as the attacker streaked down the stone stairs, straight for us, its claws making deadly little snicking noises.

The thing was long, and low, and bullet-lethal. Anya hopped aside, whip already in her hand and flicking forward neatly, and I’d already squeezed the trigger twice as Saul faded behind me. It moved like a hellbreed, stuttering through space, and was between us in an instant, snarling and hunching, blood steaming on it. The sunlight drew lashes of scorch-smoke from its hide, but it merely bared broken, shark-sharp yellowglass teeth and snapped, ignoring the assault of that clean light. Its eyes were coins of diseased green flame, and as soon as they locked on me the thing let out a shattering squealgrowl and doubled on itself, flexible spine cracking as its back scythe-claws dug in.

This was not a
ronguerdo
, a bonedog made by hellbreed that never ran by day. No, this was one of the creatures of Hell itself, and it was—

“
Hellhound!
” Anya yelled, the word disappearing into a string of gutter Latin as she chanted, hunter sorcery rising in thin blue lines as every inch of silver on her flamed.

Well, shit, I could’ve told you that.
A flash of annoyance like bright sour sugar against my tongue, but the hound was in the air, body stretched out in a lean unlovely curve.

Hit
me, sound like worlds colliding, blood exploding from my mouth, something snapping in my side as we tumbled. I shot it twice more and had my knee up before we hit the ground, flung gravel pelting both of us. The hound snarled again, a low rumble of Helletöng boiling from its narrow ungainly snout, and the impact knocked me free.

Up on my feet, ribs howling, boot soles sending up a spray of gravel as the gem poured a hot tide of strength up my arm. Leather flapping—those curved claws are
hell
even on tough cowhide—I skipped to the side, gun coming up and my left hand shaking my whip free with a quick sine-wave movement from my shoulder.

It was a relief to have a clear-cut problem in front of me, even if I coughed and nails of agony cramped through my left side. Creaking pops as the ribs snapped out and messily fused together, etheric force jolting through my bone structure like an earthquake through a skyscraper, and when the hound leapt again, steaming and smoking and howling in ’töng, Anya’s chanting reached a fevered pitch behind me. If I could keep it busy enough, she could slow it down, then we could tear the goddamn thing apart.

What was in the door?
But Saul was already gone, scrambling past us up the stairs and plunging into the Hill’s maw. I had to forget about it, trust that he would take care of himself and—

CRACK
. It hit me again, and this time we simply blinked through space and smashed into the stone steps. The gem rang, a piercing overstressed note, and my scream was cut short.

If I’d been paying fucking
attention
, I would’ve used the whip instead of letting it smack me that time. More bones snapping, my head hit sandstone with stunning force and I actually pistol-whipped the thing instead of shooting it, my left fist coming up too, freighted with leather whip handle, and clocking it on the other side of its head. ’Breed mostly have a hard outer shell you can breach with silver, but hellhounds are elastic over hard bones, the skull a titanium curve under a gooshy, slippery-thick layer of congealed darkness birthing yet more scorchsteam as the sun lashed it. It reeked of corruption, and the gem hissed angrily on my wrist.

Anya’s chant spiraled up into a scream. My left arm was up, and the thing’s jaws closed, teeth driving in. It had its back legs braced and snaked its misshapen head, hot bloody foam spattering as it shook me like a piece of wet laundry. Lines of blue sorcery bit, driving deep, and Anya yanked back. If the thing hadn’t been loosening up to take another bite of me, I would have gone with it as she whipped it back away from me, a hawkscream of effort escaping her as she pivoted, hip popping out and boots scraping through hop-bouncing gravel.

The thing howled like a freight train with failed brakes on a steep grade. Warm trickles sliding down my neck because the noise was
wrong
—it reverberated through the ice bath of the Hill’s charged atmosphere and tore at sanity itself, an amplified squeal of psychic feedback.

“
Inside!
” Devi yelled, and I was already scrambling to my feet, letting out a scream of my own as broken bones ground and my left arm
burned
, if its bite was septic we were looking at fun times.

Never a dull moment around you, Jill. Get UP!

She didn’t grab me to haul me up, but she didn’t bound past me, either. She covered as I made it, awkwardly, up the stone steps, struggling into the building.

It was good tactical thinking. One-third of our force was inside here, we had a civilian we needed to track and lock down, and inside a building the number of approaches a hellhound could use were reduced.

Blood spattered the scarred, ancient black-and-white linoleum squares. I scrabbled through on all fours, rolled while sweeping, and was on one knee with the gun braced as Anya plunged through behind me.

I was right. I could see the damage from my last visit. The monstrous wooden reception desk had a hole blown in it, a jumble of wooden chairs and trash at one end of the room vibrated uneasily, and Saul was on the stairs holding down a writhing, spitting mass of paleness that had once been Jughead Vanner. The hellhound had tossed Jughead aside to deal with us, the bigger threat.

Might have saved his life. Goddamn.

One booted foot off to the side, his coppery fingers clamped on Vanner’s nape, my Were glanced at me and his dark eyes widened slightly.

“Status!” Anya yelled.

I coughed, spat. Etheric force tingled all through me, and my left arm cramped up as the gem fought whatever toxin had been smeared on the thing’s teeth. Or in its blood-foaming saliva. Or whatever.

The world trembled and came back, the Hill shivering all over. “
Jill!
” Anya didn’t sound happy.

Buckle up, Kismet. Just buckle up.
“Fine!” I barked, and shook the whip slightly. I had to swing my shoulder back and forth to do it, my arm had seized up. “Ready to tango. Saul?”

“He’s strong.” Quiet, clinical. “You’re bleeding.”

Well, no shit. That’s how these things always end up.
“I’ll live, it’s closing up. Devi?”

“What do you wanna bet that hound isn’t coming back?” She moved back and to her left, finding a good angle, both guns covering the door. Outside our little spheres of normalcy, the air was thicker. Almost opaque, like dust-fogged glass. Paper trash twisted and ruffled at random, half-seen shapes flickering and my blue eye burning as it tried to focus
through
.

“I don’t take losing bets.” I levered myself up, coughed rackingly again.
Move it, Jill.
“Saul, what’s wrong with him? Is he bit?” A hellhound bite could do any number of things to a person.

Bad
things.

“Don’t know.” Saul’s back tensed as Vanner writhed, bare toenails scratching the linoleum. The stairs groaned sharply, once. “Steady, friend.”

It was hard work to lever myself up and turn my back on the door, even though I knew Anya was watching. My ribs ached, and my left arm flopped a little, huge jagged waves of pins-and-needles cramping up from my fingers, exploding in my shoulder, sliding down to grip at my ribs, grinding in my knees each time my boots hit the floor. Half-heard voices rose in a whispering tide, little unseen fingers tickling the edges of my vision. The bright spangles tipping each spike of my aura winked uneasily, little stars. “It’s
bad
in here. Jesus.”

“Something happened.” Devi, carefully neutral. “My guess is that fucking blue-eyed ’breed was in it up to his neck.” She paused. “And Belisa.”

Yeah, I noticed my apprentice had the Eye. Subtle, Devi.
“So it would seem.” I approached cautiously, each step tested before I committed my weight. Thin traceries of steam rose from my flayed sleeve. “I’m cuffing Vanner.”

“You sure it’s him? Maybe it’s his cousin.”

“I’ll revise my assumption when I get to him.” The banter was supposed to soothe our nerves. I don’t know how well it was doing for her, but for me, not so good. My arm came back to life in a scalding rush, and the flechettes on the whip’s end jingled merrily as I stowed it. My fingers were finally obeying me again.

She magnanimously didn’t mention that I’d pulled a rookie mistake and gotten myself hit. Nice of her.

Saul had our victim’s right arm twisted up behind his back so far it looked ready to separate the ball joint; along with the knee in his back and the lock at his nape it looked reasonably secure. Which was wrong. Because even a weakened Were should have no trouble at all holding down a human, especially one that presumably had been lolling catatonic in a chair for months and shagging ass all over the city for the past couple days.

Oh yeah. This just keeps getting better.