Angel Town Page 10

  But that wasn’t why I had my guns out. You’d have to be crazy to draw on a Sanc inside her own walls. They settle, drive in their roots deep, and are near godlike inside their hallowed homes. Outside, they’re a tasty, almost-defenseless snack. But hunters, Weres, and even most ’breed or Traders will smack you down hard if you attack your local Sanc. Neutral supply of necessities is the least they provide.

  No, I had both guns out and braced because of the hellbreed near the sleek black cash register, his eyes glowing sterile blue and his pale hair ruffling as he saw me—and grinned.

  “Jill! ” Galina yelled, and the walls tolled their deep bell note of restrained power again. Each hair on my body stood straight up, my skin shrinking with reaction, and I found myself suddenly hoping she wasn’t going to lose her temper.

  It can get awful uncomfortable inside when a Sanc loses their temper.

  “Darling.” Perry’s lip lifted, his pearly teeth bluntly human but too, too white. The silent snarl turned into a bright, bland, sunny smile, the kind a real-estate broker will use right before moving in for the kill. “So good of you to come.”

  Galina’s open palm, flung out toward him, twitched. “Don’t make me, Perry.” Flat and loaded with terrible power, the single sentence turned the air inside the shop to frost. “Jill. Jesus Christ. Pax, hunter. Put the guns down.”

  My breath turned to a white cloud. Every muscle in my body protested. Anya Devi drifted away to the right, and I was suddenly certain she was getting a better angle on Perry. An angle that would leave Galina out of the line of fire.

  My stomach cramped, my arms aching and tingling. If I needed to know how Anya felt about me, it was all in that subtle movement. We were hunters. If I was going to throw down, even inside a Sanc’s hallowed walls, she was ready to back me.

  “Stay where you are, Anya.” Galina was having none of this. “Jill, put your guns down.”

  Perry took a single step forward. Galina’s hand twitched and he halted, a ripple running under his pale skin. Like tiny mice, begging to escape. The pale linen of his suit was dotted with black ichor, hems and cuffs sending up little threads of steam, but he looked pristine under it.

  Like he could just step out from under the spatter stains and they would fall to the ground with tiny little plashing sounds.

  Splashback. He’s been killing other hellbreed. Because we got away? Maybe. I took in the spatter patterns as I lowered the guns, slowly. So slowly, my arms straining, every muscle locking and fighting me.

  I walked right into the Monde with nothing but plain lead in my gun. Jesus. My skin chilled again reflexively, and I tasted copper. What would have happened if I’d eaten something there?

  There was no deciding which was worse: being helpless and mostly unconscious of the danger, or looking back and seeing how badly things could have gone.

  Perry’s grin widened, the further down the barrels went. He shook his head slightly, white-blond hair sliding back from his face like raw silk. He changed hairstyles like some women change shoes, but very subtly. You had to look to see what he’d done each time.

  And I did not like that I knew that, or how closely it meant I watched him.

  “You left too soon, Kiss.” The sheer good humor, as if we were at a party and he was dropping banal gossip. A hot draft of desert wind, laden with the scent of spoiled honey, brushed every surface. “Always in such a hurry.”

  Buzzing pressed itself inside my skull, tiny insect feet prickling over my hands and face. I even felt them inside, chitinous bodies and dragging stingers pressing behind my cheekbones, running lightly over the surface of my brain as the buzz became a roar. They were crawling and eating, and my fingers almost shook with the urge to rip at the skin of my face and peel them off—

  “Back off, Perry!” Galina’s walls shivered again, the bell-gong sound rattling through my bones. “If I toss you out, you’re never coming back in. Settle down.”

  “I just want to talk to her.” He sounded so reasonable. I blinked furiously, my left cheek twitching as if a seamstress had her needle in and was plucking at the flesh. “Just a little tête-à-tête with my darling one, surely it can do no harm?”

  “Galina.” Devi, her tone slicing through his. “Get him the fuck out of here, or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

  All those threats. Blandishments. Pulling on me like dogs with a bone, except I was armed and ready the way a bone never is. The machine inside my head started calculating whether or not I could aim and squeeze both triggers before Galina twitched and made all of us mighty uncomfortable.

  The machine returned a number I didn’t like, no matter how many times I ran it.

  “Everyone just simmer down.” The air hardened, pressing against all of us, Galina’s temper fraying. “I can separate you all like toddlers at the lunch table if I have to. Perry, you’re done here. Leave.”

  “I don’t have what I came for.” Soft, deadly, the sliding sound of another step. “Kiss. My dearest. I have all the answers you could ever want, and I ache to give them to you. All you have to do—”

  I fought to keep the guns down. Because sooner or later I was going to chance it, no matter what the numbers in my head said.

  It wasn’t surprising someone interrupted him. What was surprising was that it was Saul.

  Weres don’t take on ’breed. Traders, yes, because Traders are still at bottom human. But there’s no corruption in Weres that can track and anticipate a ’breed.

  The thrumming growl under his words said very clearly that Saul didn’t care. “Step any closer, hellspawn, and I will kill you.”

  The world narrowed to a pinhole of light, darkness crawling around the edges. Galina’s shop trembled like oil on disturbed water, afternoon sunlight suddenly brittle and chill through the windows. Air-conditioning soughed, the humming in the walls oddly distorted, shimmers of energy cycling up. Galina’s arms tensed, and her green eyes flamed. Red-gold Sanctuary sorcery smoked in the walls.

  “Little puss.” Amused, disdainful, Perry’s chin lifted. His face had changed, cheekbones turning to blades and severe handsomeness rising from under the blandness. Helletöng grumbled, its flabby fingers picking at the strings under the surface of the visible. “I will deal with you in my own time. Go back to lapping milk and clawing at walls. Kiss…” The sibilant turned into a hiss. “When you’re ready, come and find me.”

  When you’re ready. Silver spat and crackled with blue sparks, bleeding free of the metal. My aura rippled, the gem vibrating against my wrist. The rattling hum rippled and crawled over my shoulders, sliding under my clothes. Leather rustled, my hair ruffling on a breeze that came from nowhere, Galina’s shop trembling around us both. The wooden floor groaned sharply, once.

  Perry winked out. A pop of collapsing air, a draft of rotting, spoiled honey, an obscenely warm breeze caressing my face. My guns jerked up, but there was nothing for them to track, and the Sanctuary shielding made a low overstressed noise, rocks shredding under contradictory gravitational pulls. Galina chanted something, low and furious, and my fingers cramped.

  I was sweating, great clear drops of water standing out on my skin. And shaking too, like a horse run too hard.

  “What. The fuck.” Anya sounded puzzled. “Lina?”

  The world righted itself. “Well, that was unexpected.” The Sanctuary blew out a frustrated sigh. “Jill?”

  I thudded back into myself. My arms were straight, and even though I shook, the guns were absolutely steady. They were up.

  Maybe I would have been fast enough, after all.

  Training. Goes bone deep. “Jesus,” I whispered.

  Galina skidded to a stop right next to me. I almost twitched. Hunters don’t like it when someone gets too close. But I lowered the guns, and my fingers eased off the triggers.

  And Galina, wonder of wonders, threw her arms around me. She hugged me, her walls suddenly tolling a greeting instead of a threat. She was rounded at hip and breast the way I was not, and h
er hair smelled of incense and green growing things. The murder under my skin retreated from that softness.

  18

  The Sanctuary gave up trying to shake me and hugged me again, and she was actually crying. Her soft, unlined face blotched up, and the defenses in her walls made another low, unhappy sound. She looked for all the world like a grade-school girl crying in the bathroom.

  Galina was old, though. Old enough to remember the hunters before me.

  Old enough to know things I didn’t.

  “—worried about you!” she finished up into my leather-clad shoulder. The rest of her smelled like fabric softener, smoky sorcery, apples, and an acrid tang of worry and tension. “What the hell happened? It’s been months! One second we had Saul back, everything was wrapped up, and then—”

  “Give her a second, Galina.” Theron folded his arms, leaning against a glass case. Mummified alligators, a scatter of tarot-card packets, and wristlets with brass bells crouched inside the case along with statuettes and chunks of semiprecious stones. “Our Kismet’s come back from the dead, it looks like. Saved my ass over at the Monde.”

  “And you should not have been there, Were,” Devi piped up, with a meaningful eyeroll. “First things first, though. What the fuck was that asshole doing here? And Galina, while you’re explaining that to me, I need one of your vaults. Altar and circle.” The other hunter drew in a deep breath. “Jill’s going between.”

  I blinked again. That was her plan?

  Well, great. That’s just peachy. Someone stop the world, please, I want to get off.

  I slid each gun back into its dark home, quietly, my breath coming hard and high and my arms weak as noodles. Jesus. Jesus Christ. Perry.

  You could’ve heard a pin drop. Galina held me at arm’s length, peering up at me. Dark hair fell in my face, the silver spider weighing down a curl, and I just stood there and suffered it.

  There really wasn’t any other choice. And I needed a few seconds to get myself together, so to speak. Something was rising under the hole torn in my memory, and I didn’t like the look of it.

  Saul took two steps forward. He was still gaunt, but the sheer amount of food he’d managed to pour down his throat was showing. The dark circles under his burning eyes had gone down a little, too.

  Or maybe I was just hoping they had.

  Had he really been ready to throw himself at Perry? The thought of that particular dance number, even within Galina’s hallowed walls, was enough to turn everything inside me cold and loose.

  “Between?” He sounded mildly enquiring, but a rumble poured under the surface of the word. “That’s it? That’s your wonderful idea?”

  “Oh, Lord.” Theron sighed. “This is not going to end well.” He leaned against the case like we hadn’t just seen a ’breed wink out of existence. Of course, Galina had told Perry to leave. But still…I had never seen a ’breed do that before.

  I’d never heard of a ’breed doing that before, either.

  Come on, Jill. With the holes in your head, can you be sure?

  Still, he’d done things before that made him different from the usual scion of Hell. The only thing I was getting any surer of was that Perry was a separate fish indeed. I had a cold, sinking suspicion deep down in my gut, and I wasn’t liking it. As much as Mikhail taught me not to assume, this was looking very very bad.

  Anya shrugged and slid past Galina, her leather duster creaking slightly. She was pale. “It’s the only thing I can think of, Were. The bigger question is, though—”

  “You’d better think again.”

  God, give me patience. But there was no answer. I was on my own, as usual.

  I tipped my head back. “Stop it.” I sounded very small. “I’m doing what she says.”

  “I’ve got a better way to bring a memory back. But nobody asked me.” Anger glittered and smoked under Saul’s tone, and that growl spread out, rattling the windows facing the street. The Chevy sat in a glare of afternoon sun, its pale patches leprous. The telephone poles up and down Jimenez wavered slightly in the heat. The air-conditioning kicked on, soughing cold air through vents, and the walls of the shop resounded again, but gently, all its power held in check. “And that hellspawn son of a bitch is here, inside Sanctuary, and gets close enough to touch her, and none of you do anything? What the fuck is going on?”

  “Ease up, Saul.” Theron, oddly conciliatory. Of course, he was a Were.

  But Saul didn’t sound like a Were. Saul sounded downright furious.

  “I lost my mate.” Saul was suddenly next to me, his fingers curling around my shoulder. “And the only thing you can think of is throwing her between? She doesn’t remember.”

  “You…” Galina’s hands dropped to her sides. She cocked her head, her marcelled waves falling just-so, and glanced from my face up over my shoulder, then at Theron. “What happened, Jill?”

  I get the feeling I should be asking you that. “I don’t know. Not much, anyway.” I kept my hands away from the guns with an effort that threatened to make me sweat even under the AC. The shudder that went through me made my own leather coat creak, weapons shifting. “Devi says I can remember how I wrapped up that case. I’m down with that. So let’s just get it over with.” I made a lunging mental effort, trying to prioritize. “No. Wait. Wait just a second. Where’s Gilberto, and goddammit, what was Perry doing here?”

  “Gil’s upstairs.” Galina’s soft mouth turned down at the corners. “With Hutch. I wanted them both safe and out of the way.”

  Well, hooray for that. One thing to be happy about, I guess.

  “And Perry?” Anya had turned away, studying the fall of sunlight through the windows. Tension sang in the set of her slim shoulders. “I am very, very interested in why he’s here, Sanctuary.”

  The Sanc actually shot her a quelling glance. It would’ve been magnificently effective, maybe, if Devi had been looking. “He was waiting.” Galina’s gaze darted to me, and for a moment, I could have sworn she looked almost frightened. “For Jill.”

  * * *

  I plunged my hands into the stream of cold water. The upstairs bathroom was familiar, sun falling in through the skylight and caressing every surface. She’d chosen a nice soothing blue up here, with little Art Deco accents. Maybe she realized she looked like a silent film star, so she might as well have a stage set.

  They were fighting down in the kitchen. Saul’s voice, raised, rattling the walls. Galina’s, unhappy but patient. Anya Devi throwing in a spiked comment every now and again, just often enough to keep it at a boil. She wasn’t going to win any smoothing-the-waters awards.

  It wasn’t like her. Devi knew Weres better than anyone—they helped her hunt the scurf infestation in Sierra Cancion, keeping it as contained as possible. Weres are scurf’s natural enemies, and Anya was close to a Were herself, what with the munchies and her disciplined ferocity.

  Still, the situation here was enough to tax anyone’s temper. And hunters aren’t known for interpersonal patience.

  The bathroom door quivered, and when I glanced up, a scrawny-tall cholo stood there eyeing me. Lank dark hair fell in his acne-pitted face, without a hairnet for once, and his dark eyes were even more flat and lifeless than they had been. He’d put on some more muscle and shot up a couple inches, and the way he braced himself, leaning lightly against the doorjamb, told me someone had been training him.

  Anya. You asked her to. Or she just did what another hunter would have done, stepped in to finish what you started.

  There was a gleam on his chest, a razor-linked chain holding a barbaric, bloody gem. It rested uneasily against his faded flannel button-down. If he’d been shirtless, his narrow face with its high bladed nose might’ve been a little less pizza and a little more Aztec.

  My apprentice’s hands twitched a little. Jeans and engineer boots, his fingernails were clean, and I was assessing him from top to toe before he even opened his mouth.

  Weighing. Measuring. As if I was still his mentor. Small wonder—he’
d chosen me, not Devi, and I winced when I thought of what this must be doing to him.

  “Eh, profesora.” He grinned. A shark’s wide humorless smile, curving his thin lips, and in that moment you could see a flash of who he might have been. “Had enough vacation, gonna go back to work?”

  I almost snorted. Was I just worrying about this kid? But there was a hair-fine tremor under his façade. Gilberto Rosario Perez-Ayala had a shark’s smile, true. Even in the barrio’s seethe that grin would make seasoned gangbang cholos step back and reconsider.

  But on the inside, he was a hunter’s apprentice. With the dangerous but exactly right mix of need, aggression, loyalty, a goddamn bundle of twitchy neuroses, and a need to prove himself big enough to get him into serious trouble if he wasn’t trained hard—and trained right.

  Which was my job, and I’d failed by dying on him.

  “Gilberto.” I dipped my chin at the bloody, sullen gem on his chest. “That needs to be drained. And soon.”

  I didn’t ask how the Eye of Sekhmet had ended up on him. The last time I’d seen my teacher’s greatest prize, its razor-edged chain had been hugging my own neck.

  Because Perry had left it in my warehouse. A present. In the nature of recovered property.

  That snagged a deduction out of the soup of memory. “Belisa.” I stared at the Eye, and it responded, its humming almost breaking into the audible as etheric force tensed like a fist. “He got it from Belisa, somehow.”

  Gilberto shrugged. His long spider fingers worked at the chain, but it wasn’t any good, he couldn’t get any purchase. It was kind of funny, seeing such a male reaction to jewelry.

  He finally gave up and lifted the gem carefully from his chest, gingerly sliding his fingers under and working the chain around his ears and the rest of his head. “Makes me nervous.” Sunlight gilded highlights into his hair, but it was merciless to his pitted cheeks. “Devi, she say to hold it for you. She thought you weren’t comin’ back. Estupida. But I took it anyway. You hold what you got to, profesora. Learned that somewhere else.”